The extensive list of payment gateways integrated with HostBill keeps on growing! This week we’ve added two new gateways: Paysera and Payssion!
Paysera is a licensed electronic money institution founded in 2004 that provides online payment services globally. It has developed Paysera system which offers simple and convenient methods to perform payments at lower rates and faster than at a bank. Due to a wide network of partners all over the world, all international payments in the system are performed at local rates. This way they cost up to 100 times less than international transfers at banks.
Paysera solutions are meant for private and business clients all over the world. Payments can be collected via Paysera, different banks, bank link, payment cards, SMS and other payment systems. Clients can also use a handy Paysera mobile wallet, which allows to make instant payments via QR codes.
Payssion is an online payment solution provider, that enables people to collect payments all over the world without hassle. Through Payssion platform, people get access to 200+ local and international payment methods in over 200 countries.
By integrating a variety of local payment methods on Payssion platform, the company provides a one-stop global payment solution which allows merchants to accept payments worldwide and end-clients to pay with their preferred local payment methods. This way Payssion wants to help its clients avoid profit loss, that may be caused by not supporting certain payment methods preferred by customers. Moreover, all the payment methods can be integrated through one API.
Now HostBill enables you to collect payment using Payssion and Paysera out of the box!
Our new module will help you to build full-featured, white-label DNS solution with HostBill and DigitalOcean DNS.
DigitalOcean is an IaaS company that delivers a seamless way for developers and businesses to deploy and scale any application in the cloud. Among other services DigitalOcean provides a DNS hosting service. With HostBill DigitalOcean DNS module you can built full-featured, white-label DNS solution.
Billing and automation
HostBill billing features allow you to charge per DNS zone. You can offer DNS as a free sub-service to other services or offer DNS management for domain names. All the existing zones can be easily and automatically imported to HostBill. HostBill automation also handles account creation, upgrades and downgrades, suspensions/unsuspension/terminations and well as managing and importing/exporting DNS templates.
Client and admin areas
Clients can create and manage their DNS Zones and Records from the easy to use client area, which also allows to perform bulk actions: apply DNS templates or manage records in bulk. Your customers cam also easily add, edit or delete DNS entries.
The admin area provides easy access to client zones lists, billing details, account lifecycle control panel, templates manager and more.
To learn more about module’s pricing and features click here.
Customer acquisition is the lifeblood of any company. Attracting visitors to your website is one thing, and effective selling – turning visitors into customers is another. Thanks to a variety of eCommerce features HostBill allows you to present and sell products and services using a range of functional and easily customizable order pages that will help you to drive more sales and make the ordering process quick, easy and effective. Here’s what you need to focus on when optimizing your website for sales.
Attractive layout
The first thing your customers pay attention to is the look and the general feel of your website. It needs to grab people’s attention so it needs to be attractive but it also have to look current, be clean, uncluttered and get your customers to the point – to buying your products. With HostBill you have the choice of over 50 beautiful order pages that give you innovative yet intuitive ways to present your products and services. You can choose one template for all your products or different ones for different products. All order pages can be easily customized (fonts, color palettes etc) to fit to your brand style and image.
When visiting your website your potential customers need to be able to easily find all the necessary information about your products – otherwise they’ll simply leave. With flexible product configuration options that HostBill offers you can allow you customers to adjust the package, check multiple configurations, alter specifications, choose various additional components etc – all in a simple and intuitive way. This way you can not only give your customers the control over their order (and improve their experience) but also reduce pre-sales questions that can delay the purchase.
Circular Slider order page
Checkout experience
Making your customers put your products to the cart is one thing and making them actually buy and pay for the products is completely different. To reduce the number of abandoned checkouts you need to optimize the checkout process. In HostBill you can choose between two cart types: single-item and multiple-items, so that you can choose if you want to get your customer to the checkout as quickly as possible or if you want to sell more at once.
Multi-cart model enables your customers to put more than one item from various categories into the shopping cart. HostBill Client area includes small widget on each page that can be used to check cart content, adjust already added items and proceed to checkout when ready. Best part of this feature – you can mix amazing HostBill orderpages together!
Built with Web Hosting market in mind, standard single category checkout model is the fastest way to get the client from selecting the product to checkout, where the client picks the category, selects the product and configures it, provides billing details, selects payment method and proceeds to checkout all at once.
Some customers require special treatment. Or simply customized services with unique pricing. With Order Quote plugin you can prepare a customized quotations for your services. Simply switch order pages to a draft mode to display product/service specification and hide price information. Clients will be able configure the packages and send a quotation request to enable your sales team prepare a price offer tailored specifically to the customer individual needs.
If you want to offer special products to special customers you can also use our Private Products plugin. It allows you to hide products from general view and make them available only to specific clients – you can choose which customers will be allowed to see the product.
Use your knowledge to sell more
Who else knows better which of your products complement each other or which products your customers may need? Use your knowledge and recommend the products you customers may be interested to buy during the checkout. You can use our Cart suggestions plugin and display product suggestions in cart summary. The suggestion can be based on customer behaviour or on your recommendations – you can simply highlight the products you want to sell!
This week’s HostBill release comes with a number of handy features for both client and admin areas.
Orders and Estimates
In HostBill you can create order drafts from admin area that can be later assigned to particular clients and converted into invoice. We’ve now added a bunch of features to make creating order drafts even quicker and easier. First of all, you can now clone existing customer service when creating order draft. In Accounts you can simply use Clone service (under More actions) option to quickly create draft order with service copy. You can also now adjust/override setup fees when creating order drafts. The order draft can also be used to create an estimate. From now on, if an estimate is issued for order draft, its ID is shown in order details to help you better manage your orders. Also, order draft or issued invoice related to an estimate is now shown in estimate details in admin portal. Once you send the estimate to the client, the customer can “accept” estimate in their client portal, which will result in HostBill automatically generating order and invoice using estimate contents and details!
Accept Estimate option
Admin area
With HostBill Email Verification plugin you can generate and send verification code for your client after signup. As we understand the importance of creating a positive experience for your clients and we know that when it comes to customer service every little detail counts, you can now send your clients a “thank you” email after successful verification.
HostBill Logs section now also gives you access to Global Account & Domain Logs. From admin area you can now also manage entries in client credit log (add/update/remove).
Credit log entry
Client area
HostBill logs all client activities and displays the log history and description in Logs section. Now we’ve added the credit log section to the client area to enable your customers view their actions related to the account credit.The table chart lists date for the action, action taken, status (success or failure) and related invoice, order or service ID.
Client area: credit log
We’ve also added the client feature to manage access to particular DNS zone for contacts/profiles
Plesk Central Login plugin
This week we’re also introducing new plugin: Plesk Central Login. The plugin is free and is shipped with our Plesk module. It servers as a really simple way for your customers to login to their Plesk hosting accounts by visiting one URL in your HostBill client portal. Essentially your clients just need to know their HostBill access details to login to Plesk and there’s no need for them to remember neither the Plesk URL their account is hosted on nor their Plesk username and password. By visiting https://your.hostbill.install.url/?cmd=plesklogin HostBill will authenticate client in their related Plesk, and redirect them to it.
We’re happy to announce the newest addition to our payment gateways integration list – MOLPay. MOLPay is a leading payment gateway in Southeast Asia since 2005 that connects international brands with local consumers across region. MOLPay offers global cards payment for merchants to sell online and has wide coverage of e-banking and e-wallet solutions. It is also the first payment gateway in South East Asia enabling online purchases to be paid physically with cash at their physical payment centers such as 7-Eleven. With the new HostBill integration you can collect payment using MOLPay out of the box. This payment gateway is a great choice if you have customers in South East Asia or plan to expand your business to SEA markets!
New HostBill integration with Webroot Secure Anywhere wil let you sell and automatically provision Webroot SecureAnywhere Licenses.
Webroot is a Smarter Cybersecurity solution offering cloud-based, multi-vector protection for endpoints and networks. With this module you can effortlessly sell Webroot SecureAnywehere licenses and charge your customers based on number of seats or a policy directly from HostBill.
The licenses are not only created automatically but can also be suspended (when the invoice is not paid on time), unsuspended (upon invoice payment) or terminated automatically. HostBill will also ensure automated license upgrade or downgrade upon client request.
The license WebRoot KeyCode can be displayed by the customer in the client panel. The admin panel will give you control over the account lifecycle, billing information and client area functions access and appearance.
Find out more about the module’s features and pricing here.
We’re happy to announce our new integration with ClouDNS – a technology leader in providing global Managed DNS services.
ClouDNS implements the industry’s leading cloud service architecture for maximum DNS speed and DNS redundancy. ClouDNS platform monitors, controls and optimizes applications and DNS infrastructure, ensuring traffic gets delivered faster, safer, and more reliably than ever.
The HostBill Cloud DNS module will allow you to build full-featured white label DNS solution. All your existing DNS zones can be automatically imported into HostBill. HostBill automation will also handle account creation, upgrades and downgrades, suspensions, unsuspensions and terminations, letting you focus on other aspects of your business. With HostBill you can also automatically manage predefined DNS templates and import or export templates.
Known for its friendly and intuitive interface HostBill client area will give your clients the possibility to easily create and manage DNS Zones and Records. Your clients will also be able to add, edit or delete DNS Entires, clone DNS records and manage them in bulk to improve the efficiency.
All client zones will be listed in your admin area, where you can also manage zones and records and predefined DNS templates. Apart from this, HostBill admin area will also give you access to view and manage client account details and control account lifecycle.
For the full feature list and the pricing please click here.
As HostBill is a solution that caters for the needs of service providers all over the world, 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.
HostBill language pack
Our admin area is fully translated to 7 different languages. Apart from English, you can use German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and Arabic translation. For client area, we have over 15 different languages that you can install to enable your clients browsing your client portal in their native language instead of providing them with inaccurate and imprecise Google Translate. Languages available to download for you client area include: Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Farsi, French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish. What’s most important, in HostBill you can also create your own language packs or edit the translations that are already available to adjust them to your specific needs!
Language management
HostBill comes with easy to work with GUI for language management. In your admin panel you can easily enable or disable languages, export your custom languages or add new ones. If you don’t find standard translation good enough, want to change or add new translations for your custom templates, you can easily adjust it in HostBill language settings. Our Language Editor lets you easily customize and update the translation to better suit you and your clients.
You can find detailed information about language options in HostBill in HostBill documentation.
When running an online business one of the most important decisions you make is choosing payment gateway for processing your payments that suits your business needs. With hundreds of options currently available it’s no easy choice., whether you’re just starting your business and want to choose your first payment gateway or you want to expand payment options available to your customers. HostBill offers you the choice of 90 payment gateways and over 120 payment methods. Here are some tips on what to focus on when making the decision about the payment gateway.
Application process
Getting the payment gateway up and running may be a quite lengthy process, as in most of the cases to process payments you need to open a merchant account and provide proper documentation about your business which needs to be approved. The process in different for various providers and it’s better to check the details beforehand. You should also get familiar with the contract terms, as some payment providers require for example minimum contract time and early cancellation involves cancellation fees.
Pricing / fees
The fee structures for payment gateways obviously differs, but usually is composed of the set-up fee, transaction fees and admin fees. The transaction fee can be flat or variable based on a percentage of transaction amount. Sometimes payment gateways charge extra fees for things like chargebacks, payments from international cards and more. Knowing the volume of your online payments will help you to choose the solution that best suits your needs.
Tip: our free Getaway Fees plugin will help your business to become more cost-effective as it enables you to set and automatically apply additional charges for using certain payment gateway. The charges can be set either as a percentage or can be a fixed amount. The plugin also lets you apply different charges depending on a currency used by a customer.
Payment methods and currencies supported
Your payment gateway needs to work for both: you and your customers. Choose the gateways that support payment methods and currencies that your target customers like to use. Understanding your customers’ needs is crucial to any business and in that case, if you don’t provide the payment methods that you customers prefer, you simply may lose sale opportunity.
Tip: If you offer more than one payment gateway you can use our Gateway per Client module to select which payment gateways a specific customer will have access to. It’s especially useful when you want to give the customer the ability to pay for the order that was marked as fraud. In this case HostBill can automatically limit the choice of gateways available for customer i.e: only to those that does not allow customer to refund (ie. Bitcoin payment).
Security and support
This is money we’re talking about so security plays a significant role here. Choose the provider who meets the safety requirements for payment providers and that offers maximum protection: fraud prevention tools, tokenization, card storing etc. As any problems you or your customer may encounter are usually time-sensitive, the support department you can count on is a necessity. The response time is important (it may be determined by the location – different time zones) as well as the range of the support.
Payment processing times
If cash flow is essential for your business it would be nice to get paid right away after a successful transaction. However, payout timing can vary from one to even 30 days, depending on a payment gateway. This can depend on a number of factors such as amount and value of transactions or the length of your ‘relationship’ with the provider. Daily settlements are often the most desirable but may also involve higher fees. Getting paid less frequently can turn out to be more cost-effective.
Tip: Want your customers to pay your invoices faster? Thanks to Payment Links plugin you can generate ‘Pay Now’ links and add them to invoices sent to your customers. User accessing the payment link will be automatically authenticated and will be allowed to make the payment for related invoice. If the customer attempts to visit other sections they will be automatically logged out for security reasons.
Payment processing features
Every business have unique payment processing needs: whether it’s automating recurring billing instead of just one-off payments, ability to issue the refunds or tokenization. There are a few payment processing features worth to consider when choosing the right gateway. To help you with the choice, when browsing payment gateways and HostBill supports you can see which features given gateways offers. Features that we have taken into consideration include:
Offsite processing– some payment gateways require redirecting customer to gateway frontend to finish payment. Gateways that do not require it process payment in background – your client would not leave HostBill UI. Onsite processing gateways store credit card securely in HostBill database for later use.
Authorization – credit card processing gateways that support authorisation as separate step allow you to authorise payment before capturing it.
Capture – credit card processors supporting payment capture only issue authorize and capture command in one step, processing payment in background as customer confirms payment in HostBill UI.
Process Payment – process live transaction without staff intervention – customer submits payment and it’s processed by HostBill with Payment Gateway.
Refunds – some payment gateway modules support refund functionality – allowing your staff members to refund payment with one mouse click.
Tokenization – credit card processing modules that support tokenization store credit card securely at gateway server – all what is stored at HostBill side is oken used later for recurring transactions.
Recurring charges – gateway modules supporting recurring charges allow HostBill to automatically charge customer card/payment profile when recurring invoice is issued. For other gateways when invoice is issued customer can log-in into HostBill to submit payment.
You can see the list of all payment gateways supported by HostBill here.
Each server that you connect with HostBill generates some mostly costs for your hosting company. With the new HostBill feature you can now set monthly costs of each server and have the app revenue automatically calculated. Thanks to this feature you can easily check which server brings you most profit or loss.
Each entry in Settings -> Apps Connections in HostBill translates to a real monthly cost (usually fixed) that your company needs to cover. Knowing the monthly costs and number of accounts on the server we can easily calculate the revenue you get from each server.
Servers: Set monthly cost
To set the monthly cost of the server go to Settings -> Apps connections. Choose the server and under Monthly Costs section input the monthly costs (in your main currency) for this app connection.
Setting monthly cost per server/connection in Settings->Apps Connections
The monthly cost will then be visible in the server details section and can be edited any time.
Statistics: Revenue by App
HostBill will use the data collected (current app cost, number of accounts, invoices paid in given period) and will calculate your revenue for each app. In Extras -> Statistics & Reports you will be able to find two new graphs:
Monthly revenue by App
Yearly Revenue by App
The revenue by App is listed from the highest to the lowest
Under Extras->Statistics & Reports two new statistics are available – Monthly & Yearly revenue by App.
With today’s release we’re launching three new HostBill integrations: AbuseIP DB fraud protection plugin, Amazon Route52 domain registrar and Stripe Source WeChat Pay gateway.
As in HostBill we’re dedicated to provide you with maximum security, we’re happy to introduce a new fraud protection plugin: AbuseIP DB, which is the fifth fraud protection module integrated with HostBill.
AbuseIPDB is a project dedicated to helping combat the spread of hackers, spammers, and abusive activity on the internet. AbuseIPDB provides a central blacklist to report and find IP addresses that have been associated with malicious activity online. With AbuseIPDB you can verify your orders against AbuseIP database to check if related IPs have been reported. With this plugin you can set the number of days to search AbuseIP DB for entries (default is 30) and the max number of entries reported by AbuseIPDB that will not cause marking order as fraud. Optionally you can choose to report IP on fraudulent order. When enabled, if a staff member marks order as Fraud, related IP address will be automatically reported to Abuse IP DB.
Amazon Route 53 is a scalable and highly available Domain Name System (DNS) and is part of Amazon.com’s cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS). In addition to being able to route users to various AWS services, including EC2 instances, Elastic Load Balancing load balancers or Amazon S3 buckets, Route 53 also enables AWS customers to route users to non-AWS infrastructure. Through Route52 Amazon also offers domain registration services.
WeChat is a leading mobile app in China used for messaging between people, as well as connecting people, services and businesses in China and around the world through a number of e-commerce and social features inside the app. WeChat Pay is the payment wallet inside the WeChat app, with over 600 million users. You can accept WeChat Pay payments with Stripe Source – and that payment method is now supported by HostBill! It’s worth to know that WeChat Pay is a push-based, single-use and synchronous method of payment. This means that once your customer takes action to authorize the charge there is immediate confirmation about the success or failure of a payment.
HostBill is an extremely feature rich and well-developed all-in-one platform for automation, billing, client management and support. However we do understand that even though HostBill is the perfect solution for many online businesses, making a switch from other similar system that you are currently using and migrating all the data might seem overwhelming and a bit of a hassle. We’ve been on the market for nearly 9 years now and since day one we’ve been asked numerous questions regarding migration to HostBill from competitive billing/automation systems. Over the years we’ve performed dozens migrations and as a result we’ve worked out set of best practices for migration to HostBill, so you can rest assured your data will be safe.
Migration to HostBill
At HostBill we have years of hands-on experience in migrating data from various known systems and versions as well as from some inhouse/custom-built systems and we can migrate literally from anything. Multiple times we’ve performed:
Migration from Whmcs
Migration from Ubersmith
Migration from Clientexec
Migration from Blesta
Migration from AWBS
Migration from OBAS (Odin Business Automation Standard) / PBAS
Each migration is different
Even though we’ve performed migrations from the same billing/automation system multiple times, there are no two exactly the same cases of migration. Each installation comes with different set of modules, different types of products offered and different kind and amount of data stored as well as different versions of software migrated to and from. Taking all of that into consideration we do not provide readymade migration tools to just download and run as it wouldn’t be effective. Instead we treat each migration case individually, with proper attention to every little detail, just as a custom development project, where we carefully examine requirements and expected outcome.
No migration is 100% perfect or hassle-free
During the numerous migrations that we’ve performed we’ve learned that no migration is hassle-free (but we know how to handle it). After migration there is always some data-checking required. This is why we perform migration in iterations: initial migration is a test one for client to check the data (nobody knows your clients and services better than you so you may notice if something does not look the way it should after migration). Then we apply patches to migration tool build for this case. Afterwards, the next/final migration is scheduled and takes place. Since all systems are different in general, there are some updates required after migration. i.e: product configurations, pricing/terms etc.
How migration looks like in practice
Just to give you a head-up of how the migration process is carried on in HostBill, here’s the scenario of how we proceed with each migration case.
First, the customer contacts us using website form or support ticket enquiring about migration to HostBill. Then we review the migration case by asking series of questions such as:
What entities to migrate (invoices, transactions, clients, accounts, products etc)
Approximate amount of data to migrate (number of clients, invoices, accounts, domains etc)
What sort of modules/third party integrations were used in old system (payment gateways, hosting modules, domain modules etc.)
Is there any additional development required – ie. whether HostBill offers modules used by client in previous system.
After receiving migration case details, we estimate costs and time required for the migration and once we settle the costs, we schedule the migration. Prior to proceeding with migration we do a backup – both HostBill and source system should be backed with client’s in-house backup practices. We can then perform initial / test migration to customer’s HostBill (non-production version, with emails/automation disabled to not disrupt end-client services). Once done, the customer is asked to review data migrated into HostBill. If something is missing/broken/inconsistent we patch our migration tools and re-migrate. Once we’re all happy with migrated data we treat it as final, and suggest for switch-over:
HostBill automation, emailing, client portal is enabled
Our customer notifies their clients about new billing system
Customer disables old billing system (so it would not bill the clients or perform automatic tasks as suspensions/terminations).
Ask for refugee discount!
Switching your business core component to something new is both time and resource consuming. Let’s face it – it’s also scary. We can encourage this move with a ‘refugee discount’ – contact us to learn more!
We are pleased to announce the newest addition to our hosting modules list: Linode module which will enable you to resell and automatically provision Linodes!
Linode is a leading cloud hosting provider. With Linode, the subscribers can create a cloud server in under a minute and add more compute, storage, and load balancing services as needed. Users can then dynamically scale their environments to meet business demands – paying for only what they use, with no long-term commitments.
Linode module for HostBill enables you to resell Linodes / Virtual Machines and with HostBill’s advanced billing features you can charge your customers for OS Templates, Regions, autmatic backups or private networking. HostBill automation handles the whole account lifecycle from creating the account, through suspensions, unsuspension to termination, as well as package upgrades and downgrades. The well-designed client area provides the end-clients with possibility to easily create, manage (reboot, upgrade etc) and destroy Linodes, manage snapshots, setup SSH Key and more. The access to client area sections are managed by admin from admin area. Admin area also allows to control the Linodes – start, stop or reboot, manage billing details and control account lifecycle.
You can view the module’s details and pricing here.
Client AreaClient Area – server detailsAdmin area – product configuration
At HostBill we are always looking to fix bugs that negatively impact the users experience and we value your bug reports that help us squash these bugs. We’ve just improved our Bug Report System to make the process even faster and more effective.
Found a bug in our software? Let us fix it!
From now on the bug report section is available only to active, logged-in HostBill users. You can access the Bugtracker section from the main menu in our client area dashboard. To file a bug report simply click on the blue Add New Bug Report button and you will be presented with a bug report form. Clear, concise and informative bug reports will help us to work more effectively and to fix the bugs faster. Please make sure that your report includes precise and detailed information along with any screenshots and error log entries that may help us fix the problem. Before submitting a bug report please also ensure you are using the latest version of HostBill. If you’re using an out-of-date version, please upgrade your HostBill to the latest version and see if the issue persists.
Adding new bug report
Your submission will be carefully reviewed by HostBill team and we’ll contact you if we need more information. If the bug is confirmed, we will work on a the fix. The Bugtracker section will allow you to view all the bugs that you have reported with their current status:
Unverified – bug has been added but is yet to be verified by our staff
To-do – bug confirmed, but not fixed yet
In-progress – bug is currently being fixed
Rejected – bug has been rejected (the issue is not a bug or is a support case)
Done – bug has been rejected
Bugtracker section in HostBill client area
You can also keep an eye on our weekly release notes to check all the bugs fixed during the week.
Developer version of HostBill modules
HostBill modules are available to buy in two versions: Standard and Developer, which also includes the module’s source code. Until now, the developer version was available upon request, where the source was made available through the ticket.
Since recently the customers who buy a module developer version can simply download it from our client area.
New Vodia module for HostBill will let you measure and bill for Vodia PBX provided data.
Vodia offers unified communications solutions for enterprises, contact centers and service providers. Vodia PBX software includes the most complete suite of business telephony features for on-premise and cloud based telephony systems and services.
Now, thanks to HostBill integration you can use the data from Vodia to charge your customers for auto attendants on domain and conference bridges on domain or used extensions. Billing details can be viewed by client and administrator respectively in client and admin panels. The admin area also gives you the power to control account lifecycle. With this module you can keep track of metered resources without leaving your HostBill admin area!
SSL certificate protects website from many threats: data breaches, phishing scams and other. Both website owners and visitors are becoming more aware about secure environment of the websites, especially those that ask for personal information, such as e-commerce sites. Non-https sites are treated with caution also by search engines. As of this year Google marks all the websites without the SSL certificate as ‘not secure’. Not having SSL certificate will result in website visitors being warned in the URL bar about the security issues. And no website owner wants that – and that’s why the demand for SSL certificates becomes higher.
Use your current customer base
While you already have a reason to start selling SSL Certificates, you also already have the 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 – your customers trust you and if you don’t offer what they are looking for they will reach out to your competitors.
Sell the SSL certificates completely hassle-free
Selling SSL certificates could not be easier thanks to our SSL certificate modules. With HostBill you can sell and manage SSL certificates completely hassle-free, as 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!
Offer a choice of SSL Certificates
There are different types of SSL certificates that differ based on validation level (domain, organization or extended validation) and number of secured domains/subdomains (one domain, wildcard and multi-domains SSL). Make sure you offer a range of certificates that will fit within your customers needs. HostBill offers integrations with 10 different SSL certificates providers: Enom, GoGetSSL, TheSSLStore, OpenProvider, OpenSRS, InternetX, Comodo, GlobalSign, ServerTastic and ResellerClub to make sure you’ll find the one that best suits your needs. Choose one or more modules to offer the full range of SSL certificates!
Create bundles with your existing products
With HostBill you can sell SSL certificates as separate products, but to increase your sales you can sell them as add-ons to other products or create bundles with your existing services. Offering bundles is a smart strategy to upsell your products. Choose a few specific products or services that you want your customers to purchase together, offer a small discount the customer will get for purchasing those products together and simply increase order value!
Upsell
Another strategy you can use to upsell is to promote the use of multi-year SSL Certificates. Change the default default SSL Certificate offering from one year to a two year certificate. Your customers will save some money while you will get a better profit.
With this week’s release we’re introducing new feature: Credit vouchers. With credit vouchers you can generate codes that will add credit to customer account. This feature gives your business plenty of opportunities!
Creating Credit Vouchers
Credit Vouchers can be found in HostBill Admin Area -> Extras -> Promotions -> Credit Vouchers. Vouchers are created in batches, that can contain particular number of voucher codes. Each batch can be named to help you easier manage the vouchers – for example ‘Welcome gift’ for new customers. You can specify not only the number of vouchers in the batch but also code layout and complexity (HostBill automatically generate the codes), you can set the voucher value, currency and expiration date. If all the codes in batch are used, you can generate additional codes and add the to the batch.
Creating vouchers batch
Once the vouchers are created, Credit Vouchers section in your HostBill will display details of each credit batch, number of codes used along with the information about the user and code activation date.
Admin Area: Credit Vouchers sectionAdmin Area: List of codes from the vouchers batch
To use the voucher code, the client needs to go to the ‘Add Funds’ section in the client area, enter the code in the relevant field and click on ‘Redeem voucher’ button. If the code is valid, the specified amount will be added to customer account.
Client Area: Redeem Voucher
How to use Credit Vouchers
At first it may seem that giving out credit vouchers to your customers could not benefit your business. But when used smartly, credit vouchers are a form of marketing that can contribute not only to improving your brand image but also to gain more profit. Besides, they can be used for customer recognition, reward and engagement. And to be exact, credit vouchers can help you to:
Attract new customers – credit vouchers can serve as an incentive, to encourage people to buy from your store rather than from your competitors. When you offer credit as a welcome gift for new customers after they register, you will profit twice: you get a registered client who gets additional impulse to purchase from you again!
Build store traffic – credit vouchers attract customers to your store, and if you use this opportunity you can get additional profits through upselling. Encourage customers to buy additional items that carry a full profit margin. Use Cart Suggestion plugin or LiveChat module to sell more effectively!
Reactivate old customers – it’s easier to sell to your existing customers, who already trust you, to gain new ones. However, a significant number of your customers have probably stopped engaging in sales with you. A credit voucher can be a good reason for them to start buying from you again.
Reward customer loyalty – retaining a customer is no easy task. But it’s cheaper and easier than to attract new customers. It’s worth to show a little appreciation to those who stay loyal to your company by offering them a kind of a gift.
Upsell – if you want to drive more sales, credit voucher can also be used as a reward for a certain purchase. Set the value for the minimum order value which will qualify the customer to get a credit voucher for later use!
Apologize – no matter how hard you try, sometimes things go wrong: you miss the deadline, make customer wait too long or simply make some mistake and you need to apologize to your customer. A successful apology can turn a negative experience into a positive and offering a credit voucher as a form of apology can help you do that.
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Credit Vouchers feature is free and available to all HostBill users!
We’re happy to announce a new HostBill integration: Weebly Sitebuilder. Expand your product portfolio and become Weebly reseller!
Weebly is a website and eCommerce service that helps entrepreneurs build websites that customers love to visit and shop. Weebly’s powerful tools make it easy to build a professional, mobile-optimized site and grow your business with integrated marketing and advanced analytics. Weebly also helps to tackle the manual hassles of running a successful online store by simplifying shipping, taxes, and inventory management.
With our new module for HostBill you can effortlessly become Weebly reseller and bill your clients for Weebly services and plans. Offering Weebly services with HostBill is not only easy but also thanks to flexible product configuration options it will let you maximize your revenue. With HostBill you can sell Weebly services separately or bundled with services you are already offering: domain names, hosting services etc. The module will automate the process of creating user account, creating the website and assigning the purchased Weebly plan, saving your time and effort. The module will also automatically manage account suspension and terminations. The client will be able to log in to the website builder directly from your client area and update site publish credentials.
Admin area: Main service billing detailsClient area: single log-in to WeeblyClient area: Setting site publish credentials
If you want to use one HostBill license to manage multiple brands, our Multi-brand module is the tool for the job! It will let you handle unlimited brands to sell your products or services on one HostBill backend!
Single pane of glass service management
Let’s face it: managing different brands is tricky and can get your business into chaos. Sometimes it’s hard to keep everything organized and in place. How to make this work successfully? Unify all the information in one place. HostBill is a single platform that integrates information from various sources across multiple applications and environments into a single display. Save time and effort maintaining multiple tools and manage your operations from a unified database!
With HostBill Multi-brand module each of your brands can use separate domain name, different order pages, have different support departments assigned to them – yet all of them will be managed from single admin area.
Multiple brands management
Managing different brands means following different visual identity rules. With Multi-brand module you can easily customize client area templates, invoice templates, emails and notifications sent to clients to fit the style of the selected brand. As each brand may target different customers, you set different settings for each brad: select default and available client area languages, limit the choice of payment gateways (with the ability to override configuration) or define plugins access. To keep your invoices organized you can choose separate invoice numeration sequence per brand, different invoice format and even invoice prefix for each brand.
Client management
For more efficient management, brands can be grouped into brand groups. You can let your customers use the same login details across brands within a brand group and select which services/domains/invoices your customer will have access to under the login – by brand, brand group or all. The module will also allow you to automatically assign customers from different brands to specified client groups.
We’ve just released security update for HostBill, as a response to potentially dangerous XSS Vulnerability. Severity depends on server configuration. As we take security very seriously we cannot leave our users at risk.
Applying patch
To apply this security patch, please download patch file below and unzip its contents (replacing previous files) in your main HostBill directory (usually /home/hostbill/public_html/)
Selling domain names or hosting services? Why not get more revenue and bundle your services with Duda Sitebuilder plans!
Duda is the leading web design platform for all companies that offer web design services to small businesses. Loaded with powerful team collaboration and client management tools, the Duda platform enables to build feature-rich, responsive websites at scale. Every Duda website is automatically optimized for Google PageSpeed and great out-of-the-box SEO.
With HostBill Duda integration you can resell Duda Sitebuilder and bill for Duda services and plans. Offering Duda services with HostBill is easy and effortless. HostBill automates the process of creating user account, creating the website and assigning the purchased Duda plan. The module will also automatically manage account lifecycle: suspensions and terminations.
Reselling Duda plans can help you increase your sales! You can bundle Duda plans with services you are already offering: domain names, hosting services, ssl certificates etc. Those services are often purchased together anyways, so why not catch the opportunity and expand your product portfolio.
As for the client side, the module gives your client the ability to log in to the website builder from your client area, change the domain name for the site they are building and review the website statistics.
