This week in our release we’ve added a new client registration field – file upload and new options for notifying your clients in bulk.
Client Registration – new File Upload field
In HostBill you can easily define information that is required upon client signup and stored in client profile through various Registration fields. Now, we’ve added a new field that enables your client to upload files during registration or profile edits. This field is especially useful if you need your client to provide for example proof of identity (a scan of ID etc).
One registration field allows to upload one file. When defining the field you can set which file extensions are accepted (.png, .jpg, .pdf, .zip etc). Once the file is uploaded, it will be accessible in client files section in client profile. Admins can edit and delete files, you can also allow clients to edit the files after sign-up (upload a new file). Clients can’t delete uploaded files.
File upload registration field
Client bulk notifications
Recently we’ve introduced client area notifications and now we’ve added a couple of new options for bulk notifications.
First of all, you can now notify customers via automated portal notification for custom email message sent using bulk notify tool. HostBill comes with a handy option available in your Client list: send mass email. With this feature you can select group of customers and send them email.
Send mass email option in Client list
Once you select the customers, hitting the “Send” button will redirect you to “Notify Clients” section, where you will be able to compose a new message (or use one of the templates) and send the notification via email and via client area.
Notify clients in bulk with custom message
You can also use variables in bulk messages sent to customers. Below the message ‘body’ you can simply tick the checkbox ‘use variables’, which will display the list of available variables.
Use variables in client notification
From now on you can also send mobile notifications to multiple customers at once using custom message or predefined notification template. Mobile notification feature is available in HostBill Admin -> Clients -> Notify clients. You need to remember to first enable mobile notifications and activate one of our mobile notifications modules, otherwise this option will not be visible. If you have multiple mobile notifications modules enabled, you can choose which method to use for a particular notification. While sending bulk mobile notification you can also use variables.
Mobile notifications
It’s now easy to select customers to mass notify (either via email, portal or mobile) using customer selector. You can search for customers using country, services or related app criteria and HostBill will automatically fetch matching client data.
We’re happy to present new HostBill 2019 licenses! Check out new pricing plans and integration list included in each edition!
With the changes introduced to our product in 2018, it is time for us to present new HostBill 2019 editions that reflect that changes. New HostBill licenses by default include new payment gateways, domain registrars and free plugins added to HostBill in 2019. From now on, all of the licenses also include our VIES VAT EU plugin. For the past few weeks we also worked on a brand new client area template: ‘2019‘, which we’re happy to announce is included in all of the new licenses along with a new ‘One step 2019’ order page!
2019 client panel theme
New pricing plans
With the feedback we received over the past year we are rolling out a new pricing plans for HostBill 2019. We would like to give our customers the option to choose a plan based on what stage they are in their business. Many of our customers are very early on or just starting their business and our new pricing is reflective of that spirit. Hence we’re happy to present a new HostBill Startup Edition.
HostBill Startup Edition
HostBill Startup license includes all HostBill core features: automation, billing and invoicing, client management and support tools. It also contains six provisioning modules: cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin, DigitalOcean, Vultr and Amazon Lightsail. With these modules you don’t need your own expensive infrastructure to start selling shared and vps hosting! HostBill Startup Edition lifetime license costs only $599 one-time fee and the price also includes 10 support tickets. As with every HostBill license, you can extend HostBill’s functionality at any time by purchasing additional provisioning modules and apps.
HostBill Enterprise Edition
HostBill Enterprise Edition is an all-embracing solution to cater for the needs of businesses with diversified product and services portfolio. It’s perfect for cloud hosting, VPS and managed service providers, telcos and ISPs and more. Apart from modules included in Startup Edition, Enterprise license also contains Proxmox, OnApp, Openstack, Cloudstack, PowerDNS, SolusVM and vSphere as well as IP Address Manager. With this license you get 15 support tickets!
HostBill Data Center Edition
HostBill Data Center Edition was created with Data Center industry in mind. This license includes a range of modules designed specifically for Data Center industry to improve the efficiency in managing the infrastructure. Apart from IPAM and Inventory Manager, which helps to keep track of every single item the company owns and sells and categorize assets, this edition is equipped with our new, improved Colocation Manager v6! Colocation Manager is extremely rich-featured and HostBill’s most powerful module for complex Datacenter management that ensures efficiency in all operations. It allows to store and manage Servers, Switches, PDUs, KVMs, Blade Systems, Zero-U devices and more. Data Center Edition also includes integrations with DCI Manager (a DCIM and dedicated server provisioning software), monitoring modules: Observium and Cacti to measure and bill for bandwidth usage, Ahsay Backup and R1 Soft server backup manager and freeRadius module. Data Center Edition includes 20 support tickets.
HostBill All-Inclusive Edition
The HostBill All-Inclusive license traditionally is the most powerful and most flexible. It includes all of our integrations: provisioning modules, plugins, client portals, order pages, domain registrars and payment gateways (with various payment methods supported). and It’s the best value for money – compared to All-inclusive 2018, the new licenses includes 70 new modules. It comes with additional license for testing and 100 support tickets!
All HostBill licenses are lifetime valid and come with 1 year free access to updates. We don’t want to limit your business growth – with all licenses you get unlimited number of clients and unlimited staff members. Check out new pricing plans and choose one that best fits your business!
For existing clients we’re preparing an easy upgrade path, which soon will be available in HostBill licensing portal.
Presenting ‘2019’ – a fresh new design for HostBill client panel!
HostBill client area is complete solution for your customers to manage their services, invoices, get help and get in touch with you – it is a powerful tool, but it also must look attractive and be easy to use.
When designing the new ‘2019’ template we not only made it look clean and elegant but also made it very intuitive and functional at the same time, as the easier it is to use the template, the better experience it offers its users.
In terms of design, the template combines soft colors with beautiful typography and spacious graphics. The side menu can be collapsed to take advantage of whole screen width.
This design is very fluid and will look nicely on both big screens and standard resolutions thanks to fully responsive layout. The theme was built t with pixel-perfect quality and on top of the newest technologies: Bootstrap v4, SCSS, Grunt and Semantic UI to provide you with seamless experience. Template logic is based on popular Smarty template syntax.
‘2019’ theme
The template is easy to install and fully customizable. It supports HostBill multi-language interface and all HostBill client area features. With this template clients can easily manage their account details, contact, login credentials, credit card, view invoices details, email history, browse activity logs, add funds to their account, manage allowed IP addresses, manage purchased services and domains and easily search through client area items.
Managing credit card details.
The ‘2019’ theme unifies and revamps the layout of cloud services such as OnApp or DigitalOcean making it perfect for Cloud services providers.
What is more, the ‘2019’ theme also includes a new, fully responsive OneStep 2019 orderpage!
HostBill ‘2019’ client area theme is by default included in all HostBill 2019 licenses. You can also purchase the theme from our marketplace!
New HostBill module! Resell and automate Hetzner Cloud virtual machines!
Hetzner Cloud is dynamic and innovative company that focuses on delivering a reliable and consistent, cost-effective services: web hosting, dedicated servers, colocation and custom hosting solutions. With the new Hetzner Cloud module for HostBill you can sell VPS hosting and resell Hetzner Cloud virtual machines.
As HostBill offers variety of billing models and flexible product configuration, you can charge your customers for OS templates, location and VM size. With this module, virtual machines are imported from Hetzner Cloud automatically. You can also set automatic package upgrades and downgrades, HostBill automation also takes care of the account lifecycle.Depending on client functions that you enable, your clients can create and manage (start, stop, restart, inject SSH key) virtual machines from your client area. Admin area lets you keep everything under control, from billing details, through the account lifecycle to client area sections access.
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With this week release we’re also introducing new features to our Password Manager, aimed at managing and sharing passwords with staff members and clients in a secure way. Now you can copy the passwords directly from the password edit page and from the tree view.
We’ve also added new option to MailChimp module. Now your clients have to options to enable and disable the subscription in their profile settings in client area.
One of the most powerful HostBill modules: Colocation Manager, has just received a major update! Check out the long list of new features introduced to Colocation Manager v6!
Colocation Manager is a cutting-edge, advanced and complete solution for complex Data Center management that ensures efficiency in all operations. With this tool you can store and manage Servers, Switches, PDUs, KVMs, Blade Systems, Zero-U devices and more. Colocation Manager provides you the ability to better organize and manage existing inventory and assets, seamlessly provision new inventory and plan and optimize the capacity.
You can assign any graph from Cacti, Observium or Libre NMS
Colocation Manager v6
Colocation Manager is one of our most feature-rich modules, but we don’t stop in attempts to make it even more functional and effective. Colo Manager v6 has been equipped with a number of new features, new version introduces some important changes to Item and Rack Managers and it also has improved navigation and general appearance over the previous version.
As per some general changes, the collapsible and searchable treeview will now remember opened/closed components. Connection manager, which lets you connect and manage network devices, now shows as a list with port details. “Quick management” tab will let you view bandwidth graphs, assigned IPs and manage PDU and Switch port state. Featured graphs are also now listed in main item view. Inventory fields can now be grouped into categories and the entire category can be assigned to item type.
Connection manager lets you connect and manage network devices
Item Manager
The Item Manager has been equipped with few new tabs for easier management:
Graph tab – allows to assign graphs from various sources (Cacti, LibreNMS, Observium)
Passwords tab – where you can control passwords assigned to rack item in Password Manager
Power tab – allows to control connected PDU outlets
Switch tab – allows to control connected Switch Ports
We’ve also added IPAM tab view when editing any rack item, giving you the ability to assign and manage IP addresses directly from it.
New feature: “Bind connections” enables to quickly copy connection configured in Colomanager to given Account.
All items in Item Manager are now displayed as a new page rather than popup for easier management. The items can now be easily moved to a different colocation, floor or rack. Each item can have a private admin note added. The item header is now also a shortcut to power management options.
To prevent accidental port removals, we’ve enabled alerts. We’ve also added grouping ports (network / power) per device.
All actions taken in Colocation Manager are logged and from now on you can view single rack item log.
Redesigned item overview with featured graphs, admin notes etc.
Rack Manager
First of all, now you can easily sort and organize the racks. You can define custom rack fields and set customer ownership of the entire rack. Double clicking on item on rack loads its editor. We’ve also added side and rear view in rack editor and added the option to mount items inside or at the back of the rack. You can now also setup icon representing rear of the item on the rack.
Manage unlimited racks with Side/Front/Internal/Rear/0-U Devices
Colocation Manager is a premium colocation solution that will help you manage your assets in a secure and reliable facility. Find out more about the module here.
This week we’re happy to present new integration: UpCloud, a new payment gateway: BTCPay Server and some other new features!
BTCPay Server payment gateway
BTCPay Server is a free, self-hosted and fully open-source cryptocurrency payment processor designed with security, privacy and censorship-resistance at its core. It allows you to receive payments in Bitcoins and altcoins directly, with no transaction, processing or subscription fees. There is no third-party between a merchant and a customer – payments via BTCPay are direct, peer to peer. Merchant is always in full control of the funds. The private keys are never uploaded to the server to ensure the highest level of security. The software is built in C# and conforms to the invoice API of BitPay. Now, thanks to this new integration you can process payments in HostBill using BTCPay Server!
UpCloud module
UpCloud is a reliable cloud platform that enables you to deploy high performance cloud servers quickly and easily. Thanks to UpCloud integration with HostBill you can sell VPS Hosting by reselling UpCloud instances. With HostBill various billing models and flexible product configuration options you can charge your customers for OS templates, locations or VM plans. The whole account lifecycle is automated by HostBill. Clients are able to control and manage their resources from the client area. The access to client area functions is controled by the admin. Client can create, restart, start and stop their virtual machines, inject SSH keys, manage virtual machine’s firewall and access noVNC console. Admin area provides access and allows to manage billing details and account lifecycle.
Overview of client portal for upCloud service created in HostBill
Ordering sub-products
In this week’s release we’ve also added the possibility to order sub products for active services using service upgrade screen. Until now, the products defined as components -> sub products were available to buy only when ordering the main, parent product. From now on, the client can order sub products when the main account is active, on the screen where product upgrades are available.
For the full list of new features and bugs fixed please see our changelog.
This week in HostBill we’re presenting new plugin, that adds extra measure of protection to your HostBill admin and/or client areas: Authy 2FA.
Why two factor authentication is important? It requires an extra step when logging into your accounts apart from providing your password and username and this way it makes attackers’ life harder and your data more secure online.
Authy is one of the top rated authenticator apps, that is simple to setup, provides secure cloud backup and works on multiple devices. The authentication is done through Authy Tokens generated by SMS or Phone call. The app works offline – you can still access secured websites without internet access on your phone.
This plugin works both for HostBill admin and client areas. You can add additional registration field to customer and admin profiles: Two factor auth (Authy) checkbox to enable/disable 2factor authentication in their profiles.
Module configuration
To configure the Authy 2FA authorization for the admin account, click on the My Account on the top bar in the admin panel and activate the Two factor auth (Authy) checkbox. You will be asked to enter your e e-mail address, phone number and country. Once the configuration is successful a `User created successfully` info message will be displayed.
After configuring Authy Two factor auth, during logging in to the system, an authorization page appears in which you must authorize using the Authy token generated by SMS or Phone call. Only after successful login you will be redirected to the main page.
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Apart from new plugin, this week we’ve updated our WebNIC domain registrar module – we’ve added the possibility to set ID Protection and set a proxy flag when registering a domain. OnApp module has a new feature: warnings for failed backup schedules.
We’ve also worked on graphs – now customers can select custom period to view any graphs assigned to account.
For the full list of new features and bugs fixed this week please refer to our changelog!
This week’s release is packed with new features added to various modules. See what’s new!
User Api
User API module for HostBill lets your customer gain access to HTTP REST API to enable integrations with third party apps. In this week’s release we’ve added the method that gets the domain details by name. The ‘add contact’ method now returns the identifier of the contact created. We have also changed ordering method which now additionally returns a list of all order items.
DNS
In HostBill, admins can assign and managed related services: a newly ordered service can be assigned to any previously purchased service. Related services are listed in the service details. Thanks to the new DomainDNS feature, Auto-adding/removing zone will automatically link or unlink domain and DNS service under “related services”.A link to client domain details will lead to Admin DNS Zone editor if its enabled.
Geo Location
The Client Geolocation plugin enables to get information about your client current location. Based on that knowledge, the plugin automatically selects client’s currency and preferred language. Thanks to the new feature, when registering a new client, the currency will be set according to the rules set in the module
Hetzner Cloud
Hetzner Cloud module allows the admin to sell and automate Hetzner Cloud Virtual Machines and VPS Hosting and the client to manage VM from the client area. New functionality allows to client to manage snapshots.
If you’re selling domains, HostBill is the ultimate domain management software, that will help you to operate your domains with precision and completely effort free. Not only you will free yourself from the most time-consuming tasks by automating them, but we will also give you a powerful sales tool that will provide your customers with smooth buying experience.
How is it possible? In a nutshell HostBill automates all aspects of domain management – from registration, through transfer, expiration reminders to automatic renewals. HostBill also ensures automatic synchronization of your domain names with related registrars to make sure that details you store are up to date. What is more, HostBill gives you the opportunity to order and manage domains in bulk: set privacy, name-servers, auto-renewal and other settings for number of domains with just a few mouse clicks.
HostBill is integrated with more than 40 most popular domain registrars APIs, so that you can choose best domain registrar for you and enjoy lowest rates and highest returns from each domain sold.
Selling domain names with HostBill
HostBill is a perfect tool to sell and automate your domain name offerings. You can create one or multiple order pages dedicated to domains and adapt them to your needs. HostBill offer variety of order page templates, that allow you to sell domains separately or bundled with other products/services; sell either single or multiple domains at once and offer multiple TLDs at the same time. You can also use Domain Suggestions plugin to provide your customers with smart domain name suggestions at the time of the purchase. With HostBill you also have access to multitude of plugins and tools to increase your sales!
Domain pricing
Each domain has its own price that can be easily modified, so the clients can feel free to choose a pricing solution which suits them best. Domain’s price is by default ‘Regular’ as it is always at least for a year period. You can easily add more pricing options and set a period and prices for register, transfer and renew. This way clients with different requirements are not restricted with one time period and one default price anymore. When you decide to modify the price, you can use ‘Apply this pricing to all TLDs from this Order Page’ option, so the price you’ve just set is applied to all domains automatically. With HostBill you can also update price in bulk: increase or decrease domain prices by a percentage or by a fixed amount with just one click. you can apply the change to domain registration, transfer or renewal and you can update recurring prices of related domains/accounts. It’s especially useful when you intend to provide discounts or increase prices on all domains in your storage.
Domain automation
The key aspect of HostBill is automation. For each domain product added to HostBill you can set custom automation rules. For automatic registration, transfer and renewal you can choose when the action should be performed by HostBill – when the order is placed or only after the payment is received. You can also decide when (how many days before the expiration) to automatically generate renewal order. As for the expiration, you can determine whether HostBill should (and if yes, when) auto-delete expired domain. You can also easily set domain ‘grace period’ -number of days after expiration when the client still can renew it. HostBill also gives you the possibility to send multiple automatic reminders: about domain expiration and due payment (before and after due date). Automation settings can be easily copied from one domain product to another.
DIY custom automation
Apart from standard automated provisioning that HostBill offers, each product or service can have its own, custom automation rules created by your staff. The rules can be created to send custom emails, create tickets, change account details upon certain events and more. The rules can apply to all accounts connected to the given product/service or selected account only.
Domain lifecycle
Domains in HostBill fall under a certain lifecycle, which can be automated or managed manually. First, when the customer request domain transfer or registration through HostBill order page, the domain status is set to Pending Registration or Pending Transfer. Then, when the customer pays the invoice, HostBill registers domain or initiates transfer process. It happens automatically if such setting is enabled or manually by staff member using Register|Transfer button in admin GUI. Domain status is then changed to Active. When theDomain registration period passes, HostBill issues domain renewal invoice before domain expiration date. Domain status is still Active. If a customer chooses to renew the domain, after paying the invoice, HostBill issues Renew command to registrar (or staff member does so from admin interface) and the domain remains Active. If the customer chooses not to renew the domain, after reaching domain expiration date HostBill marks this domain as expired, and the status is changed accordingly.
Domain management from client area
Clients can manage their domains from the client area according to the client functions enabled for certain domain. This means that the admin decides what customer can do: whether or not they are allowed to set automatic renewals, change billing cycle, manage nameservers, manage privacy, change ownership, manage DNS, get Auth Info / EPP Key, synchronize domain and more. Available client functions can vary and be different for various domain products.
Domain management from admin area
Admin has access to all domain details and can manage them from HostBill admin area. Domain listing displays all of your clients domains, which can be filtered by domain name, status, registrar or client name to help you quickly find what you are looking. The domain listing section allows you to perform bulk actions on domain. You can select number of domains to renew, synchronize or delete all with a single mouse click. HostBill also allows you to send message or send expiration notice for multiple domains at once.
Domain details section provides you with all the information about given domain: registration and expiration dates, status, registrar, client info, payment information and more. This is also where you, as an admin, can manage the specific domains: register, transfer, renew, delete, update contact info, display EPP code, update registry-maintained DNS records, manage email forwarders, register custom name servers or send email to the client.You can also browse (and schedule) automation tasks list, see and manage related services (services that were ordered along with the main domain or the services that the admin assigned to this service) and view Domain Log (all the changes made to the domain either by the client or by the admin).
New in HostBill: Virtuozzo Automator integration to sell and automate single VPS, fixed or flexible cloud!
Virtuozzo Automator module for HostBill
Virtuozzo Automator is a flexible and easy-to-use administration tool for managing groups of physical servers running Virtuozzo. With Virtuozzo Automator, you can manage both physical servers and virtual environments hosted on those using a Web browser. HostBill integration with Virtuozzo Automator gives you the opportunity to sell single VPS, flexible or fixed cloud and use our various billing models to bill for disk size, OS templates, backups, CPUs and memory. HostBill automation takes care of creating Virtual Machines and Containers as well as managing the whole account lifecycle. The module is extremely feature rich on the client side. Depending on the client functions enabled by the admin, clients can create and destroy virtual machines and containers and have full control over them; create and manage backups, track bandwidth usage and display various graphs, browse VM logs and more. Admin area allows to browse virtual machines and control the power, manage billing details and account lifecycle.
VM Overview from HostBill client interface
Statistics & Reports
In HostBill you can browse various information in a form of statistics and reports, available under Extras from the top menu. Statistics concern income, sign-ups and support tickets that can be filtered in multiple way. New feature for Support Ticket statistics allows to filter them by week and department:
HostBill Statistics: filter by weeks and departments
Reports in HostBill can be easily accessed through a customizable widget on the admin dashboard. Now you can not only edit data series used in a report but also sort and edit color assigned to given data series. For some this change may be insignificant, but achieving color harmony in business reports provides a visual platform for presenting the information effectively!
HostBill reports: sort and edit color of data series
The full changelog with the list of new features added and bug fixed this week is available here.
In this week’s release: new LDAP Provisioning module and domain redemption period & redemption fees feature!
LDAP, the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, is a mature, flexible, and well supported standards-based mechanism for interacting with directory servers. It’s often used for authentication and storing information about users, groups, and applications, but an LDAP directory server is a fairly general-purpose data store and can be used in a wide variety of applications.
At HostBill we’ve already developed a plugin that enables staff member authentication with Active Directory / Lightweight Directory Access Protocol.
Our newly developed module allows to sell any AD/LDAP-Authenticated service and charge for number of active users in AD/LDAP Group. When creating AD / LDAP product in HostBill, admin can set limit of users that customer can create under the account. Using the “Allow to select by client during order” function will create a form element which can apply additional pricing for user-entered value. An AD/LDAP Group can be later used by a client for various purposes, for example to authenticate Remote Desktop service. The client can manage users within the group from admin area: list, add new, modify existing users details and remove users from AD / LDAP group. Groups are created in AD/LDAP automatically by HostBill. HostBill also automates removing users from the group and upgrades/downgrades. The admin can view and manage billing details and control account lifecycle.
Managing Active Directory users from HostBill client area
Domain redemption fees
In HostBill, the whole domain lifecycle can be automated: from registration, through transfer, expiration reminders to automatic renewals. Normally, domains can be renewed up to expiration date. One the expiration date passes, the admin can still set the domain “grace period”, which gives the client additional number of days to renew the domain for a regular price set for the domain renewal.
The new feature give the admin the opportunity to set the “redemption period” – additional number of days after the domain grace period when the client can still renew the domain. This time however the client must pay the additional ‘redemption fee’ on top of the domain renewal fee. The redemption period and fees can be set for each tld individually, respectively in the automation settings and general settings.
New feature added to HostBill for domain management allows to automatically import and update TLD prices!
Some of the domain registrars API provide the possibility to import all current prices of all available TLDs. Now you can import the prices to HostBill and add them to your pricing or update current pricing. This way, thank to our new import tool you can save a lot of time and effort! What is more, you can set the profit margin (fixed amount or percentage) individually for registration, renewal, transfer and redemption. The update can be done automatically or manually.
How does it work?
The import tool is available under Extras -> Import services -> Import TLD prices. To proceed with the import first you need to create an import profile that will be connected with chosen domain registrar. For each import profile you can set your default margin added to the imported pricing (percentage or fixed amount). You also need to choose a default product – one of the TLDs that will act as a “source of data” for all items that import can’t automatically determine, such as automation settings, nameservers etc.
For price updates, you can use cron to pull price changes and update related tlds automatically, or use “Update prices with current profile now” button to do so manually at any given time. If the registry does not return registration periods that you currently offer, their prices can be auto-updated based on minimal prices (“Update missing periods” feature). The prices for various TLDs within one profile can be easily modified, which means that you can set margins per chosen TLDs – different than those originally set in the profile. HostBill also allows you to exclude chosen TLD pricing from updates, and keep the pricing set for that TLD in Product Configuration.
You can also choose to fill in missing TLDs, which means that all TLDs that currently are not in your offer will be imported from the registrar.
The new import tool will allows you to fully automate your domain pricing!
As of today there is still no certainty around what Brexit will mean for business that sell and buy from the EU. We don’t know yet what kind of agreement UK will have with the European Union (if any) so preparing for Brexit at this stage seems impossible. However, we can make some educated guesses as to what the situation is likely to be after Brexit and make some reasonable preparations, sufficiently flexible to cope with a variety of possible outcomes.
What we do know at this point, that since UK will not longer be a part of the EU, Brexit will have strong implications on VAT rules that your business needs to be aware of. What is going to change?
VAT rates for non-taxable persons
If the UK will not be a member of the European Union any longer, it will probably also not be a part of the MOSS system. VAT MOSS (Mini One Stop Shop) is a way of paying VAT if your business supplies certain digital services to non-taxable consumers in the EU – in countries where they do not have an entity – and to account for the VAT due on those supplies via a web portal. These services are always taxed in the country where the customer resides – regardless of whether the customer is a business or consumer – and regardless of whether the supplier is based in the EU or outside. Without MOSS, businesses selling these supplies would be obligated to register for VAT, file returns and make payments in each customer’s individual country.
After Brexit individual clients from the UK will not have to be charged their local tax rates. To comply with these changes in your HostBill go to Settings -> Currency & Tax -> Taxes and once the Brexit takes place remove the local tax rate for the UK.
Reverse VAT Charge
When you buy goods or services from suppliers in other EU countries, the Reverse Charge moves the responsibility for the recording of a VAT transaction from the seller to the buyer for that good or service. That way it eliminates or reduces the obligation for sellers to VAT register in the country where the supply is made. If the supplier incurs any local VAT on costs related to the service or goods supplied under the Reverse Charge, they may recover them through an EU VAT reclaim.
After Brexit, the reverse charge will most likely not be applicable to the UK companies. Our VIES VAT EU plugin (and HostBill itself) will be updated to adhere to these changes.
Domestic VAT within the UK
The domestic VAT within the UK is very unlikely to change following Brexit, regardless of whether it will be a “no-deal” Brexit or if some agreement will be made. VAT rates are also unlikely to change.
HostBill Brexit update
The update will be released shortly before Brexit. We will inform you once Brexit’s date and conditions will be officially confirmed. With the update
Auto-tax exemption for the new companies from the UK will be turned off
Reports/statistics connected to EU and MOSS will be updated
A feature in the VIES VAT module that will allow to turn off tax exemption for all companies outside of UK that have tax exemption turned on with just one click.
We won’t know for certain how VAT will actually be handled until we know the details of the Brexit agreement as this is still up for discussion between the UK and EU. This article is based of what we know as of today and we’ll update it should needs be.
Domain registration
Brexit may also have impact on domain registrations. As of today, Registry EURid manages the .eu extension under mandate of the European Commission. According to the current law the registrant of a .eu domain must reside within the European Union.
As of the withdrawal date, undertakings and organisations that are established in the United Kingdom but not in the EU and natural persons who reside in the United Kingdom will no longer be eligible to register .eu domain names or, if they are .eu registrants, to renew .eu domain names registered before the withdrawal date. As for now, any plans regarding .eu domain names registered to individuals and organizations located in the United Kingdom and Gibraltar have been put on hold by EURid until official updates from the European Commission on how to proceed will be announced.
This week in HostBill we’re adding a number of new, premium, direct domain registrar modules, that will allow you to automate various national domain name extensions provisioning and management! This week’s release is also packed with a number of new features!
Traficom/Ficora
Traficom, previously known as Ficora (The Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority) is the public authority responsible for communication regulations in Finland. It supervises the operation of Internet service providers and manages the .fi domain zone.
EURid
EURid (European Registry for Internet Domains) is the non-profit organisation appointed by the European Commission as the domain name registry that operates the .eu top-level domain and its variants in other scripts – .ею (.eu in Cyrillic).EURid uses the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) which enables registrars to perform operations on .eu domain names directly.
DNS.pt
The DNS.PT Association is a private non-profit association, responsible for the management, maintenance and registration of domains under the TLD .pt, top level domain corresponding to Portugal.
IIS.se
The Swedish Internet Foundation is an independent, private foundation that works for the positive development of the internet. It is responsible for the Swedish top-level domain .se and the operation of the top-level domain .nu. The core business is the registration of domain names and the administration and technical operation of the national domain name registry, at the same time as IIS promotes the positive development of the Internet in Sweden.
Registro.it
The Registro .it, is the Registry of .it Internet domains – domain extension for Italy. The .it Registry, managed by the IIT-CNR of Pisa,
ZACR
The ZA Central Registry (ZACR) is a non-profit organisation (NPO) currently managing various .ZA second level domains, such as co.za, net.za, org.za and web.za. With over 1 000 000 domain name registrations, the majority of these domain names are under co.za. These names represent 95% of the total number of registrations in .ZA, and a large percentage of ccTLD registrations for the entire African Continent.with over 1 000 000 domain name registrations.
SIDN.nl
SIDN, the registry of the .nl domain, is responsible for the functional stability and development of the .nl internet domain. It manages over 5,8 million .nl domain names and handle more than a billion search queries a day from internet users who want to reach .nl websites and e-mail addresses. As an independent authority working for and from within the Netherlands, SIDN supports a sustainable and problem-free digital world by providing high-grade, innovative domain registration services.
For the details and pricing of the premium domain registrar modules please click here.
Forms groups
It this week’s release we’ve also added the possibility to group forms across products for fast updates of multiple forms in one place.
Until now, if you has multiple products with various components, managing them could have been a bit overwhelming. Updating the price for 1GB Ram in 20 products would require you to click around 100 times. This was because the components were not linked between products (which also have some advantages).
As of today you can link certain forms and form values into groups, so that is you for example add an element to the form, it will be added to all forms in the group or if you update price, name or feature – it will be updated in all other form elements as well. To add a new form groups navigate to Settings -> Product & Services -> Form groups (from the left menu).
Adding a new form group
Thanks to the new feature managing your form components will be a lot easier!
Support for automated TLD/price imports
We’ve recently introduced new feature for domain management that allows to import and update TLD price from the registrar. Since this week we’ve this feature is also available for NetEarthOne, Resell.biz, ResellerClub and ResellerID domain registrar modules. We’ve also added current TLD Registrar pricing review page, and the ability to hide TLDs that are not offered in portal
Estimates
Estimates is a very useful HostBill feature that allows you to create estimate orders for your clients. With estimates you can create a bid, proposal, or quote for your clients and when they get accepted – turn them into invoices. Now all client’s estimates are listed in client portal
Estimate list in client area
Knowledgebase
HostBill’s knowledgebase is a source of information for your clients, a self-service support system, that helps you to reduce customer service to minimum. With well-written and well-organized knowledgebase articles your customers can obtain needed information without sending a support ticket. To help you achieve that goal we’ve recently published a big knowledgebase update. As of today we have also further improved navigation between categories and added option to set tags in articles.
Adding tags to knowledgebase articles
Client management
Among variety of useful dashboard widgets in HostBill there’s the Clients online now widget, that displays the list of currently logged-in clients. Now the widget also displays recently logged-out clients.
For the full list of new features added and bugs fixed this week please refer to our changelog.
This week new in HostBill: U2F/Yubikey authentication module, bulk domain transfer feature, update to PDU SNMP module and more!
U2F Authentication module
U2F authentication module allows to secure access to HostBill client and admin areas using U2F keys. Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) is an open authentication standard that strengthens and simplifies two-factor authentication using specialized USB or NFC devices.Hardware-based security keys provide a fast and hassle-free way to use two-factor authentication, without using your phone. They are based on the FIDO U2F standard, a security protocol developed by Google and security company Yubico, administered by the FIDO Alliance.
How does the module work?
Two-factor authentication using U2F keys can be enabled in the admin/client profile individually for each user. The module works only when the user has any keys registered and authorized in their profile (click here to read how to do this). One user can have multiple set of keys added. Once the module is enabled, upon logging in the user after entering the password, the user needs to insert the U2F key. If the verification is successful, the user will be redirected to the admin/client area.
Bulk domain transfer
New feature for HostBill client area allows the customers to request bulk domain transfer directly from their client portal. This feature is available in the domain listing section, where by clicking Bulk Domain Transfer button the client can provide a list of domains with their EPP codes. Chosen domains to transfer will be added to the client’s cart.
PDU SNMP module
Colocation manager is shipped with PDU SNMP module allowing to control and read states of PDU/similar devices using SNMP protocol. Number of devices/manufacturers are supported by default. In order to allow adding custom devices that are not on supported devices list, we’ve come up with DIY Device Driver, allowing for PDU module to read from any SNMP-enabled device. The module configuration has been thoroughly described in HostBill documentation.
For the full this week’s changelog please click here.
In this weeks release we’re happy to present a feature that will bring huge change to client management: Override billing & automation settings per client.
As a very complex billing and automation solution HostBill allows you to set a number of configuration options for managing your client’s operations connected to billing, invoicing, ordering, product and service automation or support. Default settings, configured in HostBill General Settings section are assigned to each newly registered client. Until today, there was a possibility to override these settings by creating a client group and changing the default settings for all clients within the group. As of today, settings can be overridden individually for each client!
Client-specific automation settings
Client’s settings for billing, automation, orders, discounts and support & notifications are now available in client profile, in Settings & Automation section. For easier management, client-specific overrides are marked in red and client group overrides are marked in yellow.
In the billing section you can configure client tax setting: custom tax rate or tax exemption, invoice creating settings, set how the credit should be applied to client’s invoice and when the credit card should be charged.
In the automation section you can override automation settings for services (auto create, supsend and terminate), domains (auto register, transfer or renew). General automation settings allow you to decide when the invoices should be generated, and the new feature allows you to set specific date of the month when the invoices should be generated for each client individually. Here you can also configure due date and late fee settings.
Thanks to new configuration options you can set exactly the day when the next invoices should be generated.
In Orders section you can assign specific order scenario per client and set pro-rata billing for new products and upgrades.
Support and notification settings tab allows you to set default ticket priority and ticket rates applied for certain client and decide what notifications should be sent to that client.
With the new feature you can also set client-specific discounts: either a ‘global’ discount for all future orders or a product (or product category) specific discount.
All configurable options are described in our documentation.
New HostBill integration allows you to sell RushFiles accounts!
About RushFiles
RushFiles is a secure file sync and share service, headquartered in Denmark, offering safe cloud storage and file synchronization. With RushFiles, a fileserver is easily migrated to a secure cloud, where all employees can access company files from any device, while always knowing where the data is stored and who has access. Thanks to RushFiles you’ll always be in control of your valuable corporate data.
HostBill integration
With the new HostBill integration you can now sell RushFiles accounts! The RushFiles module for HostBill is a ready-made tool that gives you the opportunity to expand your product portfolio, gain extra profit and new customers completely hassle-free!
As always, HostBill automatically creates accounts and handle account lifecycle. Customers can display RushFiles login details directly in your client area and you have the control over the billing cycle and account detalis.
Newly developed HostBill integration allows you to resell Imunify360 and CloudLinux licenses!
Imunify360 provides the next-generation, automated security solution developed specifically for Linux shared, VPS and Dedicated servers. It uses herd immunity and the six-layer approach delivering total protection against attacks for CentOS, RHEL, and CloudLinux OS servers. CloudLinux Backup for Imunify360, an optional feature, ensures near-instant recovery of infected files from backup and comes with 10 GB of free storage space per month.
CloudLinux OS is one of the best OS for security and efficiency in a shared hosting environment. CloudLinux OS increases server density and enhances security, thus reducing operating costs, decreasing churn rates, and increasing profitability.
With the new HostBill module you can resell the Imunify360 and CloudLinux licenses: IP Based and Key Based. The licenses are created and automatically, HostBill also takes care of their whole lifecycle (upgrades, downgrades, suspensions, unsuspensions, terminations). Clients can display their licenses details in the client area: view assigned servers, assigned IPs and keys. Admin area gives you control over account lifecycle, billing details and client area functions and appearance.
This week we’re adding new integration to HostBill: DNS Belgium domain registrar module!
DNS Belgium domain registrar module
DNS Belgium is a non-profit organisation and the domian registry for .be, .brussels and .vlaanderen domain names. In addition, the company makes the internet more accessible by acting as an enabler between all possible internet stakeholders at the national and international level, and encourage the use of the internet via domain names.
With HostBill you can automate DNS Belgium domain provisioning and management. HostBill automates domain registration, transfer, expiration reminders and automatic renewals. HostBill also ensures automatic synchronization of your domain names with the registrar to make sure that details you store are up to date. You can read more about domain management and automation with HostBill here.
Release notes
This week we’ve also introduced some other new features. OnApp DNS module was equipped with rDNS support for IPAM plugin. In CSV Data Exporter plugin which helps you export your data in an easy and organized way, Product Id, Product Code and Addon Id fields are now added to invoices export. In EURid domain registrar module you can now edit the registrant contact name.
With the new integration you can resell and automate .ph domains!
dotPH is the Official Domain Registry of the Philippines, handling registration of the .ph domains. The company is the center of the Philippine Internet Domain Name System. Apart from domain names the company also offers hosting solutions, SSL certificates and other services.
With the new HostBill integration you can automate .ph domain provisioning and management. HostBill automates domain registration, transfer, expiration reminders and automatic renewals. HostBill also ensures automatic synchronization of your domain names with the registrar to make sure that details you store are up to date. You can read more about domain management and automation with HostBill here.
