This week we’re happy to present an update to DNS Management in HostBill, a new payment gateway and new admin option for SSL management. Continue reading to find out more!

DNS Update

DNS management has been HostBill functionality for a while now, but we’ve decided to simplify it and instead of separate DNS modules include DNS management in HostBill core features. As a result, DNS Settings are now a separate section in HostBill General Settings.

DNS Templates

New feature for DNS Templates allows for them to be globally configured. DNS Templates tab in DNS Settings provides an easy way to create custom, re-usable DNS records that your clients can use with DNS packages. DNS templates can be then auto-applied to the DNS zone created automatically after provisioning.

DNS Automation features and setup

DNS Automation can be managed from two tabs: Domain DNS automation and Service DNS automation. 

Domain DNS automation tab allows to configure automation tasks connected to domains actions. Here you can decide when to create Zones on domain registration and transfer: before or after the domain is registered or transferred (optionally you can choose not to create zones automatically or not to create zone if domain was ordered with hosting in one order) and whether or not to create zones automatically upon name servers change. You can also set when to remove DNS Zones: on name server change, on domain deletion or on domain cancelation (past grace period). In this tab you can also choose and create DNS Service packages.

Service DNS automation allows to create and manage DNS automation rules, where different DNS servers & zone templates can be used for different products. You can choose when the rules should be applied: on account creation when client selected to use their own domain or on account creation when client used free subdomain. Configuring new DNS Automation rule is quick and easy – you need to enter its name and description (visible for admins only), the list of the products or a product category that the rule should apply to, DNS Service package to be added to customer account and to create a zone in it and a DNS template, that will be applied on newly created zone. You also have an option remove zone on account termination.

When a new DNS account is created, HostBill will automatically check if the product has an automation rule assigned to it and if yes, will create a zone for it and optionally use a DNS template.

You can read more about DNS Settings in HostBill documentation.

PayVision Payment Gateway

Payvision is a global payment processor that’s driven by a passion for technology and simplifying payments. Payvision Checkout payment solution provides your customers with comfortable, quick, secure and straightforward payment experience. HostBill now supports Payvision Checkout gateway for collecting payments out of the box. The payments are processed offsite – gateways redirects customers to their form for entering payment information, where Payvision takes control and takes care of everything. Once the payment is complete the user is redirected to a previously configured page.

Manage SSL certificate’s DCV method

HostBill provides a wide range of SSL modules and allows to sell, automatically provision and easily manage SSL certificates. New feature added with this week’s release allows staff members to manage and change SSL certificate’s DCV method via admin portal. It can be done in Certificate Information section, as shown below.

And speaking of SSL certificates, don’t forget about our October Deal of the Month, where you can get all of our SSL modules with 15% discount!

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New release this week comes with new features added to admin area: cancellation request types control, new credit receipts settings and more!

Cancelation request types control

In HostBill, at any point of the billing cycle end customers can request cancellation of their services that have ‘Active’ status. HostBill offers two types of cancellation requests: immediate, in which customer service is suspended/canceled with the next HostBill Cron Run or at the end of billing cycle – in which customer service is cancelled on renewal date (invoice for such service will not be generated). Cancellation requests can also be submitted by admin. With this week’s release we’re enabling to set the cancellation request type per product. This option can be set in Product Configuration -> Other Settings, where you can choose which cancellation type should apply to given products.

The cancellation requests both made by client in their client area and by the staff are displayed at the top of the account details page as well as on the account listing. Cancellation requests report includes the date when the request was made, type of the request and schedules processing time.

Once the cancellation request is submitted, HostBill will add the cancellation task to the task queue and terminate the account at the specified period. If the cancellation request is made by the client, admin can also either Cancel the account (and terminate it immediately) or delete the request (for example if the client changes their mind). All cancellation requests are logged in Cancellation Requests Log.

Credit Receipts – Final number after payment

In HostBill you can allow clients to add funds to their account for future use. Client Balance section in General Settings -> Billing allows to configure options for adding funds and managing client balance. In this section you can enable Credit Recepits – documents required in some EU countries to confirm that a client has added funds to the account (if this option is disabled regular invoice instead of credit receipt will be issued). You can modify and customize the credit receipt layout in Document templates section and in Billing settings section you can choose credit receipt numeration format and next credit receipt number. We’ve now added the option to decide when the credit receipt’s final number should be generated: immediately (default option) or after the payment.

Payment Gateways

With this week’s release we’re also presenting new featured to two of our payment gateways.

Redsys payment gateway will now support tokenization and will provide you with a token to securely store credit card details to be able to use it for subsequent card charges.

Stripe Source Alipay module will from now on support one-click refunds processing for your staff members, so the transaction could be easily refunded from invoice details.

For the full list of new features added this week, please visit the Changelog page.

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This week in HostBill we’re introducing new widgets for HostBill Dashboard, the update to CloudStack module, new domain lookup engine and more!

New widgets

HostBill dashboard, a home screen for each admin, is built from various widgets and therefore can be easily customized with different sets of widgets, in different order and state (collapsed/expanded). HostBill comes with a number of widgets included out of the box, others can be enabled through plugins and apps. Also, all reports from Statistics & Reports section can be exported into widgets, to give you quick access to important data. This week we’re adding new widgets that can be added to your admin panel:

• Recent domain failed actions
• Recent failed queue tasks
• Recent emails failed to send
• Recent error log entries

To enable new widgets, click on a blue “Add new widget” button and choose widgets from the drop-down list:

More on HostBill dashboard can be found in HostBill documentation.

Admin-only products

HostBill provides multiple options for product configuration to cover various needs of our clients. New product option allows to flag products as “Admin-only” making all related services not accessible nor visible for clients:

Cloudstack update

CloudStack is a secure IaaS orchestration platform that helps you take full advantage of cloud computing to deliver higher efficiency, limitless scale and faster deployment. CloudStack module for HostBill gives you multiple ways to sell cloud: you can bill for hourly VM usage based on staff-defined sizes or sell metered cloud and charge client only for resources consumed over time. With this module you can also sell single VPS, fixed-size clouds, flexible clouds, virtual data centers and more.

In today’s release we’re adding a number of new options for CloudStack module! In Product Configuration, Connect with App, Resources section you can now choose the Pod, Cluster and Host for provisioning and define default compute offering used for VMs, that will be used as template if new offering needs to be created. In Storage/Snapshot tab you have the option to set default disk offering used for VMs. Network tab now allow to define bandwidth limit – a total limit for all client’s VM usage (you can use 0 for unlimited). When this limit is exceeded, client service will be suspended. You can allow client to adjust it with a slider during order. In this tab you can also select default security group – selected security group will be used as a template to setup client security group. This list only loads security groups under ROOT domain. The security groups can be manages (create & remove, manage ingress/regress rules) in client area. Finally, in Miscellaneous section, among other settings, you can choose to stop VMs on account suspension. More on CloudStack products configuration can be found in module’s documentation.

Domain lookup

A while ago in HostBill we have introduced new section: Domain Lookup Settings, which allows to manage domain settings: edit TLDs lookup settings, choose the search engine and test the settings for each TLD. We’ve now added new lookup engine for domain availability search – Core: DNS, which will provide faster domain lookup results!

For the full list of new features, changes and bug fixes please visit the changelog section on our website.

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This week in HostBill we’re presenting new section to manage Client domain interface settings!

Domains: Client interface settings

Recently, we have developed a whole new HostBill section and we keep on adding new features in it for domain and DNS settings. We’ve already introduced Lookup settings, Premium domain names, Domain suggestions, DNS automation and DNS templates. And today, we’re presenting a section to manage Client interface settings.

Client area layout

The first option in Client interface settings tab allows to choose client area layout. Here you can decide where the client area widgets will appear: in the left menu, right menu or top menu. Please note that this option works only on latest HostBill themes and may be overriden by provisioning module theme.

Domain cancellation requests

The second new option in this tab allows you to decide whether or not  to allow clients to file cancellation requests for domains. Until now the cancellation request for a domain was not possible – if the clients wanted to resign from this service, they simply did not renew the domain. However, the new option will give an official confirmation that the client wants to cancel the service renewal. For domains, the cancelation request can only be processed at the end of the billing period (for other services there is also another cancelation request type: immediate). If the client chooses to cancel the domain, the domain auto-renew will be canceled and the client will not receive notifications about domain expiration date. The cancelation request details will be displayed in the domain details and if the renewal invoice was issued, it will be cancelled as well.

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This time in HostBill release we’re adding new features for products and domains configuration! Continue reading to check your new options!

Sub-products in Domains

New feature in selling domains allows to add sub-products to TLDs! Thanks to this feature, you can offer your clients other packages the be ordered and automated in one order with the domain. Sub-products can be added to the domains in product configuration, in the “Components” tab and can be configured in the same way, as for other products.

In cart, the sub-products will be visible in the second step of the ordering process, after domain configuration options. Sub-products are only shown if the multi-cart option is enabled and when a client orders a domain only.

Sub-products for domains are a perfect way to highlight the products that clients might be interested in when buying a domain, so you can use it for up-selling your products and services!

Products: Auto-generate hostname

The new option in product configuration simplifies the order process for your clients, when the hostname is required. With the new Auto-generate hostname option enabled, HostBill will automatically generate the hostname for the client, using a pre-defined template. The pattern for the hostname can be configured using variables available in HostBill, as shown below:

Cart: “Already have” domain options

In HostBill if a client purchases a product that requires a domain, they can choose (depending on the product configuration) whether they want to register a domain, transfer it, choose a subdomain or choose a domain they already have. We’ve now improved the last option. When chosen, a client will be able to further decide to use domain registered outside, use domain from the cart (available if the client has any domains in the cart) or use domain from their account, with the option to choose from the list of client’s active domains. This way client can configure the product and proceed quicker and easier!

That’s not all! You can check the whole list of new features added and bugs fixed in the Changelog section!

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We’re happy to present new Hetzner DNS module, which allow you to offer your clients DNS services, new Intsallatron client function for Direct Admin module, new Ticket notification options and more!

Hetzner DNS module

Hetzner Online is a professional web hosting provider and experienced data center operator. The company provides high-performance hosting products as well as the necessary infrastructure for the efficient operation of websites. We already have the Hetzner Cloud module, which allows to resell and automate Hetzner Cloud Virtual Machines and now we’re happy to introduce Hetzner DNS module!

With the new Hetzner module for HostBill you sell DNS services and charge your customers per DNS Zone or offer free DNS management as an addition to other services you sell. HostBill DNS features allow you to automatically import existing zones to HostBill, import/export DNS templates and manage predefined DNS Templates. HostBill automation takes care of the account lifecycle, from automatically creating the account, managing upgrades and downgrades (with automatically calculated pro-rata etc), to suspension and terminations, which can be performed upon pre-defined conditions. Clients can easily manage their DNS Records and Zones (create, clone DNS records; add, edit, delete DNS entries and more) in their client area. The availability of client functions depends fully on you – client functions can be enabled/disabled in the admin panel, which also gives you control over billing details, account lifecycle and allows to manually manage DNS Zones and records.

Get the module and start offering DNS services to your clients completely hassle free! You can also see the list of all DNS modules offered by HostBill here.

Ticket notifications

When using HostBill Ticketing System, our built-in notifications can notify your staff and/or your customers about new tickets or events in existing tickets, either via email or on their mobile devices. HostBill also enables notifications directly in your Slack channel or on your desktop. Notifications can be set for the whole Ticket Department. Now we’ve made it possible to enable/disable notifications about tickets per staff in a department! To turn on/off notifications for a staff member assigned to given department, simply click on the envelop icon next to the staff member name:

Direct Admin: Installatron client function

HostBill provides a variety of client functions for modules, allowing you to decide what your client will have access to in their client area. New Installatron client function in Direct Admin module allows your clients to install, backup and manage various apps from HostBill client portal. Once this function is enabled, clients will be able to browse available apps divided into different categories and install, after a quick configuration, the chosen ones. The backup function is also available.

That’s not all for today! You can check the full list of new features and bug fixes in our Changelog!

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This year HostBill celebrates its 11th anniversary! As a thank-you gift to our clients we have prepared two anniversary offers!

HostBill 11th birthday is a perfect opportunity to express our sincere appreciation to our clients. Our growth over the past years is due, in a large part, to your confidence in our products and services. We’re grateful you have decided to choose HostBill and we appreciate your feedback that you shared with us and some challenges that we have faced, as it all helped us to constantly improve our product and our services. 

Once again, thank you for being with us for the past years and we hope you will stay our clients for many years to come!

To show our gratitude and to celebrate this anniversary, we have prepared two special offers. The offers are personalized for each of our customers and depend on how long you’ve been using HostBill for – you can get up to 50% discount! To check what we’ve prepared for you, login to HostBill licensing portal and reveal your deal!

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Here comes the day that everyone has been waiting for! Although officially it’s not the Black Friday yet, we’ve decided to reveal our special offer a bit earlier this year!

In this year’s Black Friday deal we would like to offer you a 20% discount on all products – HostBill licenses, provisioning modules, plugins, premium domain registrar modules, client area themes and order pages, as well as Software Development Kit and support ticket bundles! 

To get the discount enter the code BLACKFRIDAY2020 in checkout and the discount will be applied to your order. The code can be used by one person multiple times, so enjoy it while the offer lasts!

Visit our marketplace to shop the modules and the pricing page to buy HostBill licenses. Do not hesitate – the offer is limited in time, so do not miss this opportunity to make some savings!

The offer is valid from 25th November to 1st December 2020. It applies to new and existing customers. The offer can’t be combined with any other sale, promotion, discount, code, coupon and/or offer. The discount is not valid for single support tickets and upgrades.

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This time in our weekly release we’re presenting new options for domain notifications, new Google Analytics plugin and new language management options for Theme 2019!

Single domain renewal notification

Recently we have introduced new section in Domain Settings, which allows to manage the domain features in Client Interface. We promised to keep on adding new options to this section and here it is – Domain renewal notifications management. The new option lets you decide how client should receive notifications about expiring domains. You can either choose single notification, where the customer will receive separate emails about each expiring domain or bulk notifications, where customer will receive max 1 email a day for all his expiring domains. Whichever option you choose you can customize your email template for the chosen notification.

New Google Analytics module

Among many useful plugins in HostBill you’ll find the Google Analytics module, which allows you to enable and integrate analytics tracking without the need to edit any files. The existing Google Analytics module for HostBill used analytics.js library. The new module uses gtag.js – a new method of implementation of the analytics.js library. The previous version of the module is still available though, so you can choose which one you prefer to use! The plugin is free and available for all HostBill users – you can simply activate it from your admin panel!

Languages in 2019 Theme: LTR/RTL support

At HostBill, we have made sure to provide support for various languages. Thanks to multiple languages options both your clients and your staff can use HostBill in their native language. (More on supported languages and language management can be found here). We’ve now updated the 2019 Theme for HostBill client area to support script direction. When managing the languages you can now choose the language ISO code and the script direction: Right-to-left (RTL) or Left-to-right (LTR). When choosing the latter (for languages such as Arabic, Farsi or Hebrew), the text will be adjusted to the right and the menu will be placed on the right.

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This week in HostBill we’re happy to introduce new VPS module: SolusIO and a number of new features for admin area: cancellation requests reasons, team module access management, control display of billing cycle method and more! Continue reading to find out the details!

SolusIO module for HostBill

A new integration joins the list of our Cloud/VPS Hosting provisioning modules! SolusIO is a virtual infrastructure management solution that facilitates choice, simplicity, and performance for ISPs and enterprises. Our new, white-label SolusIO module is a perfect tool to offer your clients VPS and Application Hosting. HostBill automated billing enables to choose your preferred billing model and charge clients for OS Templates and backups. As usual, the whole process of creating user account and the VMs is automated, as well as upgrades, downgrades, the whole account lifecycle, including suspensions, terminations etc. Clients can control their resources from client area, depending on the functions enabled: manage their virtual machines: start, stop, restart, rebuild or resize; access noVNC console, display usage graphs, enable/disable rescue mode, manage backup: list, restore, remove. They can also easily login to SolusIO. Admins, apart from managing/controlling billing details and account lifecycle, have the ability to manage clients VMs and auto-generate forms for Applications Installation using HostBill rich-featured admin area.

The integration supports prepaid billing for now, but postpaid billing will be added soon! You can find out more in the module’s featurepage!

Cancelation requests reasons

In HostBill, at any point of the billing cycle your customers can request cancellation of their active services. HostBill offers two types of cancellation requests: immediate – in which customer service is suspended/canceled with the next HostBill Cron Run, and at the end of billing cycle, where customer service is cancelled on renewal date (invoice for such service will not be generated). Cancellation requests can be also submitted by admin. In this case, admin can enter the submission date and time and choose to Process request automatically.

New feature added this week allows to define various cancellation requests reasons that your clients can choose from when making the request. The reasons can be defined, edited and managed in General Settings -> Other -> Cancellation Reasons.

When clients file cancellation requests, they can either choose a reason from the list or provide another one, that can be entered in the “other” field. Reasons can also be selected for cancellations submitted by admins.

Team module access management

Multiple modules available for HostBill can have different access level. In each module’s general settings you can define whether the module should be accessible for all or only selected staff members. We’re now making the module access management easier, by allowing to grant access to the whole Staff Team, instead of having to choose all Team Members one by one!

Admin: Control display of billing cycle method

As a software that meets the needs of subscription businesses, HostBill offers a variety of billing models and billing cycles. Now we’re giving you some more options to customize how the billing cycle and the pricing is displayed in your order page. In Settings -> Ordering you can now choose the Billing cycles display. Apart from the default option you can choose:

• Recurring price with billing cycle, no setup fee
• Billing cycle name
• Billing cycle with setup fee
• Billing cycle with discount
• Billing cycle with pricing converted to lowest cycle

You can see the preview of each method and further customize it with available variables. 

In Ordering Settings you can also choose the Domain period display. Apart from the default option you can choose:

• Period without price
• Period with monthly price
• Period with discount values

The full list of new features and bug fixes from this week’s release can be found in our weekly Changelog.

The post Sell VPS and Application Hosting with new SolusIO module for HostBill! appeared first on HostBill Blog.

Today in our weekly release we’re introducing new product log and new e-invoicing functionality with three XML invoicing modules!

XML Invoices

Electronic invoicing, also called e-invoicing, is a form of electronic billing that in is being increasingly popular, widely used and in some cases even required. In many countries e-invoice has the same legal validity as a paper invoice: it is a receipt for the delivery of goods or provision of services. In order for an invoice to be electronic it must be issued and received digitally. The use of electronic invoicing provides great advantages and benefits to users, such as a reduction in costs, the improvement of business management, of payments and collections, as well as the possibility of accessing new sources of finance. Each country is implementing its own conditions and formats for the use of an e-invoice. HostBill has now developed a new feature, allowing to export invoices to XML format. We are also happy to introduce three XML invoice modules, which support export of XML invoices:

• XML_UBL
• JPK_FA_3 (for Poland)
• FatturaPA (for Italy)

You can read more on the modules configuration in HostBill documentation. With one of the modules enabled, you can export your invoices to XML format (in Invoice Details -> Actions -> Download XML).

In Billing settings you can also enable the option to automatically generate XML invoice each time invoice is created and store all the XML invoices on your server (for later use for download). Optionally you can choose not to generate XML invoices automatically but only on request. 

The modules are an initial implementation, so please verify exported files with your accountant. We will be further developing the modules based on our customers feedback.

Product log

All actions in HostBill are logged allowing you to keep control over what’s happening in your HostBill. You can easily browse the logs divided into various categories, helping you to quickly find what you are looking for. We have now added a new Product log, which stores each action taken on product configuration. This way you can easily check which staff member and in what way changed given product settings.

The list of the changes displays the product name that the change concerns, date when the change was made, login of the admin that made the change, number of changes, and the changes description.

New features for Openstack module

This week we’re also adding a number of new functionalities for our Openstack module. New client function allows customers to enter their own user data scripts when creating a new VM. When using flavor billing you can now create multiple instances. You can also rename and sort flavors available in the Cloud Hosting package. We’ve also made a change and now IPs assigned from external networks will be recorded in account log.

Explore our weekly Changelog to see all the release notes!

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New release, new HostBill functionalities! This week we’re launching new LibreNMS Billing module, new bulk notifications for domains and new settings for credit notes!

Single Domain notification

Recently at HostBill we’ve introduced domain renewal notifications  management, which allows you to decide how client should receive notifications about expiring domains: a single notification for each domain or bulk notifications. Now, we’re adding improvements for other notices: sent on domain registration or transfer.

When the bulk notification option is, when registering or transferring a number of domains at once, the notifications will also be sent in bulk, so instead of several emails, only one will be sent. We have also created three new email templates: Domain:Registered:Bulk, Domain:Transferred:Bulk and Domain:Renewed:Bulk so you can easily customize your messages.

Credit notes numeration format settings

Credit notes are documents indicating the money coming out/owed to customer, mostly used to indicate refund. In HostBill you have various settings available for credit notes. The new option allows to choose the numeration format for your credit notes. You can either choose to use separate numeration/format for credit notes or follow numeration/format from regular invoices. If you decide for the first option, you can set the next credit note number and the format to use.

Libre NMS Billing module

LibreNMS is a fully featured network monitoring system. HostBill integration allows to use data from LibreNMS to bill your clients for total transfer, averages or 95th percentile. We’re now introducing a new plugin, LibreNMS Billing, which is a part of LibreNMS module. LibreNMS Billing module gets traffic graphs and usage values from LibreNMS API. You can read more about the module in its documentation.

That’s not all for today! The whole list of new HostBill functionalities, changes in the admin area and bugs fixed can be seen in HostBill changelog!

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With today’s HostBill release we’re happy to present a set of new options: new client portal notification, new functionality for Multi-Brand module, new feature for invoices and more!

Portal Notifications

In HostBill you can contact your clients via a support ticket, email, text message or client portal notifications, and  notify them automatically or manually about events important for them. Client area notifications are displayed in the client area dashboard and unlike emails, which we tend to get hundreds of daily, they are hard to miss. You can use them to notify your clients about important events, that may require the customer to take the action or when you want your customer to pay attention to a certain issue. New portal notification allows to inform your clients when a staff member adds a reply to a ticket!

Multi-Brand

Multi-Brand module for HostBill lets you create unlimited brands to sell your products or services on one HostBill backend. Each brand will use separate domain name, yet all of them are managed from single admin area. To help you manage your sales, you can assign order pages and product categories to brands and assign different support departments to each brand. New feature added to the module gives you the ability to set “Access order pages” by brand. This option lets you decide when clients can list and access order pages. You can choose to:

• Allow to access and view portfolio for all visitors
• Require login/signup before accessing order pages
• Require login/signup before listing & accessing available order pages

Invoices

In HostBill you can exempt from tax certain clients (in client profile automation settings) or companies (using VIES VAT EU plugin). New option for invoices (in Actions menu) enabled to remove Tax Exempt from the invoice.

Hexonet module

HEXONET is one of Europe’s leading leading developer and service provider of reseller technologies for the domain industry, including domain backordering. HostBill module allows you to automate HEXONET domain provisioning and management. You can use HEXONET integration with HostBill to resell domains: more than 150 TLDs (.com to .vg). HostBill domain management features allow to manage contacts, manage DNS, get EPP code, update and register nameservers and more. New functionality enables to set SRV records and TTL options.

The post New release appeared first on HostBill Blog.

Another year has passed – a surprising and for many a difficult year, for various reasons. And while 2020 is becoming a history, we’re taking a look back to see what we managed to achieve. Here’s HostBill summary of 2020!

Constant improvements

In 2020 our fast release cycle has not been compromised and we’ve published 63 releases, so you could enjoy new improvements in HostBill more than once a week! This year we developed 552 new features – more than in the previous years! Our Developers Team also fixed 1133 bugs, so you can imagine they had their hand full with work!

New integrations

In 2020 we also significantly expanded our integration portfolio. We added 11 new provisioning modules, that allow to sell licenses (R1Soft Licenses, ActiveCampaign Reseller, LiteSpeed Licenses and Rhipe Microsoft CSP), VPN services (VPNresellers), SSL certificates (OXXA SSL), Cloud or VPS hosting (SolusioIO, Alice-IT VPS, Jelastic), DNS services (Hetzner DNS), or Dedicated Servers (DCIManager 6). We also added new LibreNMS Billing module and kept on improving our existing integration. Among many updates it’s worth to mention DirectAdmin (support for Installatron client function) or Cloudstack.

As an addition to provisioning modules, we also introduced cPanel DNS Helper and SSL Automation Helper plugins. The list of HostBill plugins joined 4 export plugins: ActiveCampaign Marketing, Vtiger CRM auto-export, Zoho CRM auto-export and lexoffice auto-export, new fraud protection app: IPQualityScore, 3 new XML invoice export modules (FatturaPA, UBL_XML, JPK_FA), new Google Analytics plugin, Private Products module and Allowed Submitters plugin, so in total 13 new plugins!

Additionally, we added client area support for Colocation Manager, client area management section for IPAM (and new Auto-PTR feature), updated Password Manager and Password History plugins, added two-way SMS verification in SMSVerification module, client area support for Mobile 2FA and a number of new functionalities to Multi-Brand.

The number of payment gateways supported by HostBill increased to 108 (with additional various payment methods available). 13 new payment modules include: Checkout.fi, WeChat Pay, ipay88, Barion, Moneris Vault, EveryPay, PayTM, Yandex Kassa, Peach Payments, Stripe Intents FPX Gateway, Redsys, QuickBooks Payments and PayVision.

The variety of domain registrars integrated with HostBill now also include 4 new domain modules: Ascio, Internet .ee, NIC.ru and .st Registry.

In 2020 we launched 2 new order pages, compatible with 2019 Client Panel Theme: 2019 Wizard and Domain Cart.

New features

The number of new features introduced to HostBill this year was bigger than in previous year, so let’s take a closer look on the most important ones.

Domain and DNS Settings

First of all, completely new Domain and DNS Settings section in admin area. 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 was 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, Premium domain names, domain name suggestions, DNS templates and automation. What’s more, we also gave you the ability to add multiple connections to one domain module. Apart from that, a number of other smaller functionalities for domains were introduced, such as Domain transferred out detection, new client interface settings, new client functions (Auth Info / EPP Key) and new possibilities for handling Domain cancellation requests and domain notifications. It was pretty fortunate year for domain resellers using HostBill to automate their domain management!

Billing

In the past year, a huge new billing functionality was introduced. DIY Metered Billing allows HostBill users to define their own variables for any product or service, regardless of the provisioning module used, and add resource usage values using API or add usage manually from admin UI. This created a window of opportunity, allowing to include ad hoc charges for usage of various services by calculating and specifying the amount to be charged on the invoice!

Small improvements were made to Credit notes (which are now created in Draft state with ability to convert to final state), Credit receipts (final number after payment), recurring invoices and recurring prices (which are now updated on currency rate changes). We also made it possible for admins to control the display of the billing cycle method.

Ordering

To improve the ordering process, we introduced the Order Agreements feature, which allows to add various contracts and agreements to specific products and services and Built-in thank you page, as the last step of your customers journey.

Ticketing System

Our powerful Support Ticketing System also benefited from a number of new functionalities:  Ticket Timers to auto-execute ticket related tasks at scheduled time, new Ticket Tags management features for better organization, Slack VIP tickets, SLA policies per Ticket Department, Ticket notifications per staff member, Ticket Department access settings for Client groups & Contacts, just to name a few.

Products and services

Thanks to the newly added Product log all actions taken on product configuration and settings are now logged. New option allows to flag products as “Admin-only” making all related services not accessible nor visible for clients. This year we also made it possible to create sub-categories for order pages, to help you better organize your products and create a simple product hierarchy. We enabled to add sub-products in Domains to increase your up-selling opportunities. We also introduced some new options for product upgrades & downgrades and custom automation.

Admin area

In admin area we launched completely redesigned and improved Smart Search, various handy widgets and client viewable admin notes to enhance admin-client communication. We made some changes to transaction handling. We notably improved cancellation requests handling, added control to cancellation request types and enabled Cancelation requests reasons. This year we also launched Client Area template editor, that allows to edit basic theme options without editing files.

If you’re interested in further details, you can browse our changelog entries and other blog post from this year!

What to expect next?

In the coming year you can expect further improvements to HostBill. In 2021 we plan to release a new developer portal with refreshed and expanded documentation. We will be working on the billing engine and its new possibilities as well as advancing our key integrations and their interactions (automation and the way DNS, domains and hosting modules work together). Stay up to date with HostBill news by following our blog and social media accounts!

Taking this opportunity we wanted to wish you a happy, healthy, successful and profitable New Year!

The post HostBill in 2020 – yearly summary appeared first on HostBill Blog.

It’s time for our first release in 2021! We’re happy to present new feature for our Support Ticketing System: ticket reply lock and a bunch of other improvements!

HostBill Ticketing System

HostBill provides flexible and automated Ticketing System with multitude of features that allows your support team to be organized, focused, efficient and effective and to provide exceptional customer service. In HostBill, staff members can work on tickets together. To improve communication, your staff members can communicate on each ticket thread individually using ticket notes – a mini chat for staff members to work together on ticket. HostBill provides live updates, so if one staff member is working on a certain ticket, all other team members will know about it. All actions taken on the ticket are logged – responses, status changes and more – to give the management ability to supervise ticket history at any given point.

Ticket Reply Lock

When one of the team members works on a ticket reply, all other team members can see that in ticket details, however, they can still post their own reply. We’ve decided to introduce a new feature: Ticket reply lock, available in Support Settings, which allows to lock the ticket reply for other staff members when staff starts replying to the ticket. We’ve also added two new staff permissions: Remove ticket reply lock, which allows to remove ticket lock from all tickets, that the admin has access to, and Reply to tickets with reply lock, which enables to reply to the tickets, with the Ticket lock applied by other admins. 

How it works

With the Ticket reply lock enabled, when a staff member starts to reply to a ticket, it becomes locked for other staff members. Admins will be able to see which staff member put the reply lock on the ticket and preview the reply. Admins with the new ACLs will additionally be able to remove the lock and/or reply without removing the lock. Once the admin, who applied the lock replies to the ticket, the lock is removed. If the lock is applied to the ticket for longer than an hour without any actions taken on the reply, HostBill cron will remove the lock, enabling other staff members to reply.

Other news

This week we’re also adding new functionalities to recently introduces XML UBL e-invoicing module: the option to bulk export UBL invoices and the support for PDF attachment in UBL file. New admin permission allows administrators to use HTML tags in the editor. The Knowledgebase now has the possibility to preview articles in admin area. We also added support for flavor billing in Billing Alerts plugin. The full changelog, as always, is available on our website.

The post New feature: ticket reply lock appeared first on HostBill Blog.

Today in our weekly release we’re presenting an update to Google Authenticator plugin.

Google Authenticator plugin update

Google Authenticator provides additional layer of security when signing up. The HostBill plugin, compatible with Google Authenticator mobile app, implements two-factor authentication with QR-codes. Google Authenticator setup is very easy with QR code generated right in HostBill client & admin area. New option added to this module allows the Google Authenticator to remember the device for 30 days, so the next time upon logging in, the admin/client would not have to provide the security code.

Two factor authentication

Google Authenticator is one of a number of Security/Verification plugins available for HostBill. Creating a strong password is important, but even the most complicated passwords can be cracked putting your clients and staff members at risk. An effective way to keep your customers and your business safe is to use two-factor authentication solutions. It’s an additional step that the users need to complete upon login, making it more difficult for cyber criminals to breach the account. With HostBill you can choose a variety of two-factor authentication modules for both client and admin areas, such as SMS Verification, Email Verification, One-time Passwords, Google Re-captcha, DuoSecurity, Mobile 2FA, CryptoPhoto, Authy or U2F Authentication. You can browse them all here.

For other news and the list of bug fixes please refer to the Changelog section.

The post Google Authenticator update appeared first on HostBill Blog.

We’re happy to present a new fraud protection module: IP2Proxy Detection! This week we’re also introducing new features for domain automation, client area and more.

IP2Proxy Proxy Detection fraud protection module

HostBill provides a variety of fraud protection plugins to help you detect and automatically block fraud attempts. New addition to this list is IP2Proxy Proxy Detection from IP2Location.

IP2Location is a provider of IP geolocation technology and database products, widely used in securing, enhancing and customizing Internet experience. IP2Proxy Proxy Detection Database contains IP addresses which are used as VPN anonymizers, open proxies, web proxies and Tor exits, data center, web hosting (DCH) range, search engine robots (SES) and residential proxies (RES). Anonymous proxy servers are intermediate servers meant to hide the real identity or IP address of the requestor and are often used for online credit card fraud and spamming. With IP2Proxy integration you can check customer order for potential Proxy use and reject orders from selected types of proxies, countries, certain ISP types or IP2Proxy threats detected.  The verification can be omitted for admin orders. Learn more about the module here.

Domain automation: Credit failed renewals

In HostBill you can set various domain automation features, in bulk or per TLD. New automation feature introduced this week is Credit failed renewal. With this option on, if the domain renewal is unsuccessful and the domain renew invoice has been paid, it will be credited back to the customer account and if the credit notes are enabled, a credit note will be issued. The invoice status will be set as unpaid and it will be handled as if the admin performed a refund.

Client area: listings

In HostBill client area, new functionality allows clients to determine number of rows per client area listings (accounts, domains etc). A small change but aimed at improving customer experience!

Full release notes are available in our changelog.

The post IP2Proxy Proxy Detection module appeared first on HostBill Blog.

In today’s release we’re introducing new payment module: PerfectMoney integration!

PerfectMoney payment gateway

Perfect Money is a financial service allowing the users to make instant payments and to make money transfers securely throughout the Internet. With HostBill integration you can let your clients pay online for goods and services securely and confidentially using Perfect Money Internet Payment System. This payment gateway processes payments offsite, redirecting customers to the gateway frontend to finish payment. The gateway supports payments in Euro and USD. As most of our payment gateway integration, this payment module is free and available to all HostBill users. You can find more about it here.

If you’d like to learn a bit more about HostBill automated billing and payment processing, download our brochure.

New features

This week we’re also adding to new settings to admin area. The first one concerns currency settings. In HostBill you can choose currency display format, suffix, sign etc. New option allows to decide number of digits displayed before the decimal point, by default set to 10. This can be changed in General Settings → Currency & Tax Settings:

The second new option concern chargeback auto-handling. It controls how HostBill should react when discovering chargebacks. Until now, two possibilities were available: either not to take any action on chargebacks or to mark related invoice as unpaid. New option allows to also suspend related service. It can be set in Billing Settings → Misc.

Full changelog for today’s release is available here.

The post New payment gateway: PerfectMoney appeared first on HostBill Blog.

This week release comes with new notification module, update to DirectAdmin Installatron, new admin functions and more!

Plivo Mobile Notifications plugin

The best way to stay informed about various events in HostBill is to use one of our mobile notification modules and get notifications straight to your phone! We already offer a dozen various integrations to choose from and now we’re adding a new one: Plivo, so you can send mobile notifications to clients and staff members using Plivo SMS platform.

Your staff can be notified about various ticket events (new ticket, ticket status changed, new ticket note, ticket reply and more). The notifications can be send only for tickets with selected priority level or only to selected departments. Staff notifications can also concern new orders and new transactions, new chat messages and also failed account/service automation or failed login. The module can be also used to notify your clients about new invoices, ticket replies etc and to send reminders about service expiration or payment dates.

As HostBill modules are designed to work together, apart from standard HostBill event notifications, you can use this module to get notifications from other modules as well, for example Cloud Monitoring (to get notification when the website is down) or SMS Verification (to get verification code).

You can get the module here.

Directadmin v3: Installatron auto-install

A while back we’ve introduced Installatron function to DirectAdmin module. New option allows to automatically install applications after purchasing a hosting account. This option can be enabled during product configuration. You can select the app to install or allow client to select it during checkout. You can also setup client forms – add fields to configure the app.

Admin: Pro-rate post-paid cancellations

New admin area option lets you decide whether or not to enable prorating post-paid service with enabled purchase pro-rata during cancelations. You will find this option in Product Settings -> Other, when cancellations are enabled:

Full changelog with today’s release notes is available here.

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We’re back with our monthly special offer! This time Deal of the Month includes 15% discount on all Cloud/VPS Hosting modules!

15% off on Cloud/VPS Hosting modules

A special treat for you this February. For a limited time we’re offering all of our Cloud/VPS Hosting modules with 15% discount! To get the discount simply use code CLOUDVPS2021 upon checkout. The offer is valid for two weeks, from 11th February till 25th February 2021.

What’s on sale?

The list of Cloud Hosting and VPS services modules for HostBill is quite extensive! You can choose from over 20 integrations, including: OnApp, CloudStack, SolusVM, Openstack, Proxmox, Virtualizor, DigitalOcean, VMware, Amazon EC2, Amazon Lightsail, Citrix XenServer, Scaleway, Vultr, Linode, Hetzner Cloud, UpCloud, Virtuozzo, Alice-IT VPS, Jelastic and SolusIO. This way HostBill allows you to build a robust cloud management platform with versatile cloud products portfolio, use a mixed set of capabilities from different vendors and bundle their offerings seamlessly!

Shop the modules at https://hostbillapp.com/features/hosting-integrations/tag/cloud_vps_hosting/

Why sell Cloud/VPS hosting with HostBill?

HostBill cloud billing solution with its flexible billing models enables to sell fixed-size, flexible or metered cloud and charge for OS Templates, IP Addresses or bandwidth and overages. But what’s the most important: it’s all automated:

• importing products from app servers
• service provisioning
• account synchronization
• service suspensions, terminations, cancellations
• downgrades and upgrades
• DIY product automation with custom automation rules, logic and conditions
• and more!

You can find out more about billing and hosting automation from our brochures!

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