This week in HostBill we’re launching new integration that will allow you to resell R1Soft Licenses!
R1Soft Licenses module
R1Soft is a commercial backup software for Web hosting providers. R1Soft provides fast, scalable and affordable server backup software for both Windows and Linux platforms in private and public clouds.
With this HostBill integration you can resell R1Soft licenses and let HostBill automatically handle billing, invoicing and license management. HostBill will not only create/terminate license but also manage upgrades or downgrades, all without staff intervention. HostBill admin panel will give you access to client billing information and license details. You also will be able to effortlessly import existing licenses into HostBill. Clients on the other hand can view the license and account details in client panel.
Why sell R1Soft licenses? It is a perfect way to expand your product offerings and with HostBill automation, you can do it completely hassle-free!
ACL / Permissions
In HostBill, we provide a range of different permissions that can be configured per staff member, team or department. Permissions cover different areas: billing, support, system configuration, security, notifications, products & services and other. This week we’ve added two new permissions: “View Knowledgebase” and “View other staff online” to allow access to “staff online” info. Additionally, viewing knowledgebase statistics now require “View Statistics” ACL. We’ve also made a few other changes in ACLs. From now on only admins with “Edit Configuration” ACL can erase logs, restart queue jobs, see phpinfo/system information widget and see license information. Accessing queue list/task details will now require active “View Logs” ACL.
This week in HostBill we’re adding new ActiveCampaign Reseller module and adding new features to Cancellation Requests processing and Client Balance management!
ActiveCampaign Reseller module
ActiveCampaign provides marketing automation SaaS platform with email marketing and CRM tools that helps businesses go beyond marketing automation to optimize their customers’ experiences. With HostBill integration you can resell ActiveCampaign Accounts and thanks to the variety of billing models that HostBill offers bill your customers for a number of subscribers or emails sent. HostBill automation handles account termination and management of the whole account lifecycle and automatically manages account upgrades and downgrades. This integration supports HostBill account metrics feature, which allows to allows you to set limits of resource usage, monitor it and trigger certain actions upon exceeding the limits. Admin area, apart from standard HostBill functions, enables to import existing accounts to HostBill as well as import products and pricing, view quotas and metrics and keep everything under control. Clients can login to their ActiveCampaign account directly from your client area, where they can also view billing and usage details.
Cancellation requests
At any point of the billing cycle your customers can request cancellation of their service that is Active. Cancellation requests that are submitted by clients can be processed Immediately, where the service is suspended/canceled with the next HostBill Cron Run or At the end of billing cycle, where the service is cancelled on renewal date (invoice for such service will not be generated).
We’ve recently added the ability for admin to submit the cancellation request. If the cancellation request is submitted by admin, it’s now possible for admin to specify when cancelation should be processed. Simply tick the Process request automatically box and provide exact date and time to process the request:
Client balance
Client balance section(in GeneralSettings -> Billing) allows you to configure options for adding funds to the account and managing client balance. New option enables to decide whether client can add funds if he doesn’t have active orders:
For the full list of new features and bug fixes please refer to our weekly changelog.
Recently we have introduced a new Client Area template editor that allows to edit basic theme options without editing files. Using the editor, even if you don’t know html, css or js ,you can still edit the template and customize things such as logo, theme colors and more all by yourself!
Client area template editor can be accessed from General Settings -> Client Area Template. Simply choose the template and click on “edit” button, which will redirect you to the Theme Editor. Please note that currently not all themes support this feature.
In the Theme Editor the Images / Logo section allows to choose images and logos that appear in client area in different sizes to make sure they are displayed correctly on all pages and on different devices.
In the Templates styles section you can customize the whole template layout: fonts, colors across different template elements, position of certain elements, menu size, enable transitions or rounded style and much more. This way you can customize the template and match all elements to fit your brand image and style!
Left menu editor allows to customize the left menu. You can easily add, remove and edit menu sections and elements: edit links, icons, choose conditions (for example the type of customers for whom given element will be visible).
Theme editor also gives you the opportunity to enter your custom JS or CSS which will be added to all theme pages. In the Analytics section you can also add Google Tag Manager code to both the head section and the body section.
You can find detailed information about Client Area Theme Editor in our knowledgebase.
With the new HostBill module you can effortlessly resell LiteSpeed Licenses: LiteSpeed LoadBalancers or LiteSpeed Web Server!
LiteSpeed Licenses module
LiteSpeed provides a web server software, that has quickly become an industry leader in terms of performance, scalability, and security. LiteSpeed Web Server is completely compatible with Apache, allowing for a seamless transfer to this more efficient technology.
LiteSpeed is available in a number of different licenses to choose from, serving everyone from the low-end hobbyist with a single site, to large hosting providers handling thousands of clients. This HostBill module allows to effortlessly resell LiteSpeed Licenses: LiteSpeed LoadBalancers or LiteSpeed Web Server and let HostBill automatically handle billing (with the billing period of your choice: monthly, yearly or one time for owned license), invoicing and account management. All existing licenses can be automatically imported to HostBill using our import tool. In HostBill licenses can be created and terminated and suspended/unsuspended automatically, based on custom automation tasks and rules. HostBill also manages upgrades and downgrades fully automatically.
Clients can view license details and license key from client panel, where they also can manage their account, billing details and other services – depending on client functions you enable.
This month we’re announcing our second Deal of the Month. This time you can buy all HostBill SSL modules 15% off!
15% off on all SSL modules
In February each year we celebrate Safer Internet Day to raise awareness about online safety and to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones. This year Safer Internet Day will be celebrated globally on the 11th February 2020 with the theme: Together for a better internet. In the spirit of that day, we’re happy to announce our February deal of the month: all of our SSL modules are now 15% off! You can choose any of available integrations and start reselling SSL certificates from Enom, GoGetSSL.com, TheSSLStore.com, Open Provider SSL, OpenSRS SSL, InternetX SSL, Comodo SSL, GlobalSign SSL, ServerTastic SSL, Reseller Club SSL, RealtimeRegister SSL and NameCheap SSL! Choose your modules and claim your discount using code SAFEINTERNET2020 during checkout. The offer is valid from 5th February until 19th February 2020.
Why sell SSL certificates?
While SSL certificates become the necessity for all website owners, you can use HostBill to sell SSL certificates effortlessly and hassle free. You probably already have a customer base – most businesses in need of a SSL Certificate will already have a domain name, website and a hosting package. If you’re selling any of those services that means that you have potential buyers to start with. Don’t miss out on this extra revenue opportunity! Our integrations fully automate management and provisioning of your SSL certificate offerings. The certificates are issued, renewed and synchronized automatically. HostBill also automates account lifecycle, invoicing and payment processing. So once you have the SSL module activated, all you need to do is to setup the SSL products in your store and start selling.
In this week’s release we’re excited to present a new section in admin panel for managing domain settings, with completely new powerful features!
HostBill is the ultimate domain management and automation software, providing all the essential tools to run a successful domain business. New addition to domain management in HostBill is the Domain & DNS section in HostBill General settings, that ensures a user-friendly environment for managing various settings related to your domain names.
Lookup settings
Until now HostBill was using built-in search engine based on WHOIS protocol for domains searching. From now on you can set the lookup engine offered by registrar modules to selected or all TLDs. This way you can search for domains directly through the registrar API, which allows to perform the search faster and to search for a number of domains at once.
Lookup settings
Premium domain names
As of today we’ve added the support for premium domain names – which is optional (you can toggle it in settings). For selected domain registrars HostBill will now be able to get the price directly from the registry and add a selected margin. Premium domain names are currently supported by modules:
RRPProxy
Realtime Register
OpenProvider
Enom
OpenSRS
ResellerClub
ResellerID
NetearthOne
Resell.biz
Premium domain names search preview – client area
Domain suggestions
Domain suggestion is a very handy tool that will check for availability and provide clients with smart domain suggestions based on their initial search. Domain suggestions are based on domain registrars API. In domain suggestion settings you can choose the suggestion engine that will offer other similar domain names available to register.
Domain name suggestion tool
Synchronization settings
This new section allows to control automatic domain synchronization. You can not only choose which domains to synchronize (active, pending registration, expiring etc) and for which registrar modules but also decide when and how often to perform synchronization!
Synchronization settings.
You can find out more about these new functionalities in HostBill documentation and stay tuned for future blog posts where we’ll further explain in details for domain management functions in HostBill.
This week in HostBill we’re presenting a bunch of new functionalities for Client Area Theme Editor, Account Metrics and some of our modules.
Theme Editor
Recently we’ve introduced new Client Area Theme Editor, that allows to easily customize client area template, with no coding necessary. We keep on developing the editor giving you even more options to adjust all theme elements. In today’s release we’ve added the ability to set positions of the popup and the option to show/hide main sections logged in customers. We’ve also added the File overrides section, where you can define files that will override default .tpl files.
Account Metrics
HostBill Account Metrics feature allows to set limits of resource usage, monitor it and trigger certain actions upon exceeding the limits for certain modules. New improvements to this feature now allow to quickly copy account metrics from other, similar products. We’ve also added another option that makes it easier to define quotas. As products are often configured by client using Forms, we’ve added the opportunity to define quota limit using forms values.
As for the Account Metrics, our vmWare vCloud Director module now also supports this feature! You can define quotas for:
CPU Allocation / Usage
Memory Allocation / Usage
Storage Limit / Usage
Number of VMs / running VMs
Number of created Networks
HostBill Fraud Protection
HostBill built-in fraud protection tool is a perfect solution to strengthen your defense against fraudulent orders. Our module functionalities allow you to lower fraud risk by using your past HostBill orders as reference point to distinguish potential fraud orders automatically. New option added to this module enables to verify existence of MX records on customer’s email domain.
New domain lookup settings in HostBill allow to choose lookup engine to search for domains and edit TLD’s settings.
Lookup settings
New section in HostBill (that can be found under General settings → Domain & DNS → Lookup Settings) allows to manage domain settings: edit TLDs lookup settings, choose the search engine and test the settings for each TLD.
Until now HostBill used its built-in lookup engine based on WHOIS protocol to search for domains. Thanks to new functionalities you can now choose search engine for domain lookups between Core engine and engines offered by domain registrar modules. The search through registrar API can be performed faster (depending on the API) and it can be done for several domains at once.
This feature is currently supported by modules: RRPProxy, Realtime Register, OpenProvider, Enom, OpenSRS, ResellerClub, ResellerID, NetearthOne and Resell.biz. In future releases we will be adding this functionality to other modules as well.
As for the domain search, Lookup settings tab is where you can also set the maximum and minimum length for the domain name and IDN format.
We’ve also added the possibility to choose an engine to which provides WHOIS data to be displayed in client and admin areas.
For each lookup engine you can easily edit existing and add new tlds and quickly test if the settings for given tlds are correct.
Lookup settings preview
It is also possible to update TLDs in bulk to use selected Lookup Engine and Whois Engine, with just a single mouse click.
For more details on Lookup settings please refer to our documentation.
In this week’s release is full of new functionalities added to our admin area! New settings for password restore method, out of stock products, recurring invoices, new ticket tag management features and domain transferred out detection!
Password restore method
New option in Security Settings will let you choose password restore method. Once the user requires to change the password, they will receive an email with the password change confirmation link. Choosing the default Email option will result in sending random password over email. Another option is to set the new password manually (after confirming password change).
Domain transferred out detection
This new functionality in HostBill allows to detect if the domain was transferred to another registrar. After a number of failed domain synchronization attempts (that can be set in Settings -> Domains & DNS -> Synchronization -> Transferred Out Detection), the domain will be considered as Transferred out and its status will be changed to such.
Show out of stock products
Until now in HostBill, when a certain product purchases exceeded available stock, these products were no longer displayed in your order pages. From now on you can choose (in Settings -> Ordering) to show out of stock products, without the ability to order them.
Why show out of stock products? Having items showing as “out of stock” increases your perceived inventory and makes your product portfolio looks more comprehensive. Keeping “out of stock” items on your website also helps to drive traffic to your store. Also, leaving an item as out of stock shows it was purchased multiple times and it may push customers to act and buy something else.
Ticket Tags management features
Tags in HostBill support ticketing system is a very handy feature that allows to easily organize and manage your tickets by adding color-coded tags to them. We’ve now added a new section in Support to manage the tags. To access this section users need to have relevant ACL: viewTickets i viewStats. The section allows to browse tags, view number of tickets with certain tag and display those tickets, edit (change name and color) and archive tags. Archive tags are no longer visible for staff members. Archive tickets however can be restored.
Recurring invoices: Last day of month
In HostBill you can easily create recurring invoices – either automatically or manually. When creating an invoice you can set invoice frequency: weekly, every 2 weeks, monthly, every 2, 3 or 6 months, anually or biennially. New option allows to set the frequency to monthly, with the invoice generated on the last day of the month:
For the full list of new features, changes and bug fixes from today’s release please refer to our changelog.
Thanks to new HostBill functionality you can now offer premium domain names and sell them with a margin!
What are premium domain names?
Premium domain names are usually short, memorable, easy-to-spell names that end in a popular extension such as .com. Domains are considered premium for a large number of reasons including length, keywords and brandability. Premium domains tend to cost a lot more than normal domains, because they are more likely to drive traffic to a website.
How to sell premium domain names with HostBill?
HostBill now supports Premium domain names and you can enable them in Domain & DNS Settings. With this option enabled, if searched domain is premium and available, you can offer it with margin. The value of the margin can be set as desired (as a percentage of the registry price), so it is totally up to you how you want to price your premium domains.
Please note that currently our core lookup engine is not able to search for premium domains. To be able to search for premium domain names you need to choose in Lookup settings one of the domain modules, that support premium names.
Currently, premium domains are supported by modules:
RRPProxy
Realtime Register
OpenProvider
Enom
OpenSRS
ResellerClub
ResellerID
NetearthOne
Resell.biz
Premium domain names present higher value to customers. Such domains add authenticity to their business and help them get more visitors to their website. For domain buyers it’s a branding and marketing investment and although it can be a big expense, many premium domains renew at a standard rate. It’s well worth to have them available for purchase, not only for profit but also to respond to the expectations of the potential customers.
New integration with IPQaulityScore service will help you proactively detect and prevent fraud!
IPQualityScore module
Identifying high risk users and transactions is very important to keep your company safe from fraud. With HostBill you can build a secure environment for processing your transactions using our built-in fraud protection features or one of integrated third party extensions or combine both for even better protection against fraud. This week we’re happy to present newest addition to the range of our fraud protection modules: IPQualityScore integration.
IPQualityScore offers fraud protection tools that provide a real-time fraud scoring and over 25 risk analysis data points to analyze how likely a user or visitor is to engage in fraudulent behavior. IPQualityScore allows to prevent bots, fake accounts, fraudsters, suspicious transactions and malicious users without interrupting the user experience. Use IPQualityScore module for HostBill to verify your orders against IPQualityScore.com service and automatically reject orders falling under defined IPQualityScore rules. Filter abusive users and fraudulent transactions in real-time before they can negatively impact your business!
Joker money balance widget
Joker.com domain registrar module has been equipped with a new money balance widget which allows to show current balance across multiple Joker accounts on HostBill admin dashboard! Similar widget is also available for Ficora module.
To activate the widget go to the Home tab, click the Add new widget button in the upper left corner, select the Joker Money Balance widget and press the Activate button. The widget updates the balance every hour, if you want to force the update you can press the Refresh button.
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Full changelog from this week’s release is available here.
Transactions section in HostBill provides insights into transaction details and enables to add new and manage existing transactions. We’ve recently introduced some changes into transaction handling.
Adding new transaction
When manually adding a transaction first you need to choose the client that the transaction should be assigned to:
Once you choose the client you can now choose the transaction type:
Add to client credit – will add credit to client credit balance
Add to single invoice – adds transaction to client’s single invoice
Add to multiple invoices – adds single transaction to multiple invoices. This way admin doesn’t have to manually divide payments or issue bulk invoice – HostBill will create sub-transactions for all individual invoices.
Transaction typesAdding multi-transaction
Editing transactions
When editing a transaction, you can browse all sub-transactions, refunds, chargeback, documents and invoices connected to this transaction.
Transaction edit screenTransaction edit screen
Transactions statuses
All transactions can now have one of the following statuses:
Processing
Transaction has been booked but it’s still proccessed by the gateway. Such transaction can be cancelled by the gateway. This option is used by GoCardless module for now. Usually the transaction is added once it’s processed by the gateway, which could last up to 7 days. Now, in module configuration you can set that the transaction will be added once the gateway starts to process it.
Successfull
Transaction has been successful. This is a default status.
Refunded
Transaction has been refunded through a different transaction.
Chargeback
Transaction has been reversed through a different transaction.
This week in HostBill we’re happy to present a new provisioning module that will allow you to become VPN reseller!
Sell VPN services with VPN Resellers module for HostBill
VPN Resellers run the biggest VPN reselling program globally, with state of the art technology supporting the most used systems. VPN Resellers module for HostBill gives you an excellent opportunity to effortlessly start your VPN reselling business and build a new source of recurring revenue!
With HostBill accounts are created and managed automatically. Automation also handles billing and invoicing operations. Clients can view their VPN and billing details in our user-friendly client panel, and admins can manage accounts from admin area.
VPN details in client areaVPN details in admin area
It is estimated that the global VPN market in 2020 will be worth $27 billion USD and it’s going to grow in the coming years! The surveys show that even one quarter of internet users around the world use VPNs! These numbers show that there is a high demand for VPN services and that selling VPN can be a highly profitable business. And as you probably already have a customer base of people who understand the value of VPN and a secure internet access, you can totally effortlessly expand your business into this market!
For full list of new features and bug fixes this week please refer to our changelog.
HostBill Smart Search has just received a little makeover!
HostBill Smart Search feature provides efficient search through your HostBill installation. It searches within tickets, invoices, accounts, domains, orders and clients matching your query. We’ve recently worked on the Smart Search UI so it could not only look better but also work better.
The search results are now divided into categories: Clients and Client Contacts are now separate categories, and apart from that: Orders, Accounts, Domains, DNS, Invoices, Estimates, Transactions and Tickets. For the tickets you can also choose to search within ticket replies. DNS Zones is a new category that you can now search for using Smart Search. If a client manages in HostBill any DNS zone matching the search query, it will be shown in search results. Next to each category you will see a number of search results given.
When searching for clients, Smart Search will provide information which attribute matches the searched phrase. For example when looking for an example.com company information, the search will provide email addresses matching example.com:
For each admin Smart Search will display the last 5 phrases searched for in a given session (since logging in to the admin area) at the beginning of a new search:
We hope these changes will make using Smart Search in HostBill even more efficient!
Stay connected to your clients – export you customer data to ActiveCampaign and build personalized email campaigns!
ActiveCampaign Marketing module
Active Campaign email marketing, marketing automation and CRM tools that will help you to build personalized email newsletters and create campaigns to better connect and engage with your customers. With the new HostBill integration with ActiveCampaign you can connect your client data gathered in HostBill with your ActiveCampaign account to optimize your customers experience.
With ActiveCampaign Marketing plugin you can automatically subscribe new clients from your HostBill store to ActiveCampaign and assign clients to the selected list. You can also easily export existing clients in bulk! To help you with email personalization you can assign client registration fields values in HostBill to ActiveCampaign merge fields!
Benefit from automation offered by both HostBill and ActiveCampaign and stay connected to your audience!
ActiveCampaign Marketing module configuration
As per the GDPR requirements you need to first obtain a permission from your customers to send them marketing information. When configuring the module, you can set up a Field for opt-in signup – registration field with checkbox, which allows the user to choose whether they want to subscribe to Active Campaign Marketing. Beforehand you need to create a new registration field and the Field for opt-in signup should have the value of the variable name from the newly created field.
In module configuration you can also decide whether or not to automatically subscribe new customers and automatically remove the Active Campaign Marketing contact along with the HostBill profile. You can also click on the Load Lists button to select the list which the customers should be assigned to.
ActiveCampaign Marketing module configuration
Once the module is configured in activated you can also set the merge fields to use to personalize your emails.
Detailed information about the module configuration can be found in documentation.
Take this opportunity and raise awareness among your customers. Remind your clients how important is data backup. Become a comprehensive service provider and offer your clients solutions they need. Start selling backup services with HostBill!
Recently introduced Domain Name Suggestions feature is a handy tool for your domain name business. Now you can provide your customers with smart domain suggestions to help them find the best available domain name!
Getting a domain name for your business only seems like an easy task. What if the name you were going for is not available? Smart domain name suggestions using synonyms, suffixes, prefixes, short url, new gtlds can help with this task! Now you can generate ideas for domains and check their availability for free!
Domain suggestions tool
Domain name suggestions feature can be enabled in General Settings -> Domain & DNS. Domain suggestions are based on domain registrars API. When enabled, HostBill domain suggestion tool will check for availability and provide clients with smart domain suggestions based on their initial search.
For domain suggestions to work properly you need to choose the domain module that supports this feature. Currently this feature is supported by modules:
RRPProxy
Realtime Register
Enom
OpenSRS
ResellerClub
ResellerID
NetearthOne
Resell.biz
In domain suggestion settings you can not only choose the suggestion engine but also set maximum number of suggested names per search and limit search results to selected TLDs. You also have the option to decide whether or not to include adult results, however not all suggestion engines support this option.
New handy feature added to HostBill Support Ticketing System! Now you can set ‘Ticket Timers’ to auto-execute ticket related tasks at scheduled time!
HostBill flexible and automated helpdesk system with multitude of features allows your support team to be organized, efficient and effective. Thanks to automation it enables you to provide exceptional customer service with minimum effort. Newly introduced Ticket Timers feature is a great addition to our support tools. It allows to schedule certain ticket actions such as ticket reply, adding a note to a ticket, changing ticket status or priority, adding tags, sending notifications, assigning ticket to a staff member and more at given, scheduled date and time.
How to add and manage ticket timers
Ticket timers can be created, executed and deleted by staff members with relevant permissions (that can be set individually per staff member, per staff team or department). Timers are assigned to a specific ticket and can be added and browsed in ticket detail section.
Ticket details section
When adding a new ticket timer first you need to enter a date and time when the timer should be executed. As your customers can be based all around the world and to avoid confusion, you can choose the timezone from the dropdown menu. The client’s timezone is displayed below.
Timer details
Then you can proceed to configuring actions that should be taken upon timer execution. Available actions include sending a ticket reply, adding a note to the ticket, sending email notifications about ticket reply to subscribed staff members, changing ticket status, changing ticket priority, assigning ticket to a certain staff members, adding staff to subscriber list, adding or removing ticket tags. One timer allows to execute multiple actions. Timers are then executed automatically as scheduled, but they also can be executed manually by admin. Scheduled timers can be cancelled: either by authorized staff members or automatically by client reply, if auto-reset option is on. All timer actions are logged in Ticket log.
Once created, ticket timers are listed in ticket details. In this listing you can quickly see who and when created the timer, see it’s status, scheduled actions and more:
Ticket timer listing in ticket details
Ticket Timers feature is thoroughly described in HostBill documentation, where you can also find information about other features of our support system.
This week in HostBill we’re introducing three new integrations: Alice-IT module which enables to sell VPS hosting and two new payment gateways with multiple payment methods: WeChat Pay and iPay88!
Alice-IT module
Alice-IT is a German IT company that offers reliable hosting solutions, cloud servers, domains and licenses. The company operates their own state-of-the-art server hardware in one of the most renowned and ISO-certified data centers in Frankfurt am Main, at the largest internet hub, the DE-CIX.
Alice-IT module for HostBill gives you the opportunity to resell virtual machines and sell VPS hosting. Flexible product configuration options and multiple billing modules enable to charge clients for os templates, backups, VM size, IPs and traffic limit. With HostBill, VMs are created and managed automatically. Automation rules also cover packages upgrades and downgrades. HostBill will also monitor traffic usage and execute shutdown on traffic overuse.
End-clients have access to their services in client area, where they can manage and monitor their services. Depending on what client functions you enable, end clients may have access to creating, destroying, rebooting, upgrading, reinstalling VMs, accessing console and more.
WeChat Pay is a popular daily payment tool used by Chinese consumers around the world. It provides a smart and efficient payment solution for both consumers and merchants. With WeChat Pay enabled on mobile phone, users can make transaction payments at any time and anywhere with no digital wallet required. Thanks to HostBill integration you can now make connections with Chinese consumers. WeChat Pay integration with HostBill supports QR Code Payments, where users use WeChat to scan the code, confirm the amount, and make the payment after passing the security checks. WeChat Pay gateway supports multiple currencies (including CNY, GBP, HKD, USD, JPY, CAD, AUD, EUR, NZD, KRW, THB, SGD, RUB, DKK, SEK, CHF and NOK). This gateway is free and available to all HostBill users!
iPay88 payment gateway
iPay88 is one of the leading regional Payment Gateway Providers in South East Asia. It provides e-commerce and payment services, including one-click payment acquisition online to merchants regionally and globally. This payment gateway is often used in Indonesia, Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Bangladesh, Middle East, Myanmar and Laos. Now HostBill also supports iPay88 payment gateway for collecting payments out of the box. The gateway support multiple payment methods. When configuring the payment gateway you can choose Allowed Payment Methods, which customer will see in client portal when choosing iPay88 to process the payment.
In the current situation, with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic present worldwide we face many challenges both in our private and professional lives. Due to the isolation requirements, many of you may now be switching to remote work. Without any prior experience working remote, it can be hard to anticipate the challenges your remote employees will face. Although HostBill is in fact built for remote work, in case this situation is new to you, your employees and colleagues, here we’ve highlighted some of HostBill features that can be especially useful and help you work efficiently.
Centralized interface
HostBill is essentially the only tool you need to run your business. HostBill is a single platform that integrates information from various sources across multiple applications and environments into a single display. One interface provides access to all client data, client support tools, billing system, service management and more. Log in once and access all the tools you need to do your job. And as long as you have any device with internet access at hand you can keep on working from any place in the world, whether it’s your office desk or a comfy couch at your home.
Powerful automation
As in HostBill most of the billing, ordering and service management operations are automated, you don’t need the employees in the office to do the daily routine tasks. With automated billing you get paid online faster while saving your time and increasing your productivity. Simply set up your billing model and workflow using HostBill flexible billing automation features and rest assured all of your billing operations are being taken care of. The same concerns ordering and service management – you can even set up your own, custom automation rules and conditions to adapt automation options to your needs and to each product/service/account individually!
Create custom automation tasks
Effective team communication
Remote workers need to be better at communication than those working together in the office. Communication plays a vital role in work, and when team members are apart, it’s vital to put communication front and center. With HostBill Internal note system you can attach internal notes to literally any part of the project – a specific ticket, account, domain details, invoice, order etc. The notes can be used to explain tasks, describe the progress on task completion or to simply share some ideas. You can also use the internal tickets feature. They are assigned to the customer but visible only for staff members. This way your staff can start working on a specific issue related to that customer and inform the client only once the problem is solved. Nothing lessens the distance between the team members more than collective work!
Add internal notes to various HostBill sections
Stay notified
When you’re working remotely it’s especially important to stay informed about what’s going on in business. In HostBill you get multiple notification options, thanks to which you’ll never miss a new ticket, new order, new transaction and more. You can use mobile notifications (push or text message) via various service providers, desktop notifications or notifications via Slack. You can set which notifications to receive per each staff member, staff team or department!
Get notifications about various events in HostBill
Plan and organize
Remote work might bring on many distractions. Especially when you’re working from home, you may feel there are so many things – houseworks, that need to be done. Also, when there is no direct supervision or a colleague lurking over your shoulder it’s easier to get distracted by social media or other not work related websites. To stay focused on work it’s good to make a schedule and give your day some structure. Use HostBill To-do list and Calendar widgets to create and schedule tasks, online-meetings or calls. You can share them with colleagues or make them private, visible only to you. This will also give you some motivation to stay concentrated and execute designated tasks.
Supervise
Finally you need the tools to supervise your staff. End of Shift Report plugin enables employees to write reports on closed/resolved tickets during their shift to inform the superior about their performance during the shift.
Support Time and Performance Tracker module lets you measure and analyze your support staff performance. It allows to organize support tasks by creating different job types the tickets can be assigned to. Every ticket has its own custom timetable and every second your staff spends working on the support thread is logged.
HostBill also provides statistics on your income (by time period, country, service, gateway and app), sign-ups and support tickets. You can also easily create various reports to monitor both your staff and the whole business, such as Daily Perfomance Report, Revenue per product type, Hours spent online by staff, Average number of ticket replies per department and many more. You can read more about Reports & Statistic in our documentation.
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We hope that this will help you to organize your remote work and stay focused, productive and efficient.
