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billing portals

River

River

Member
Verified Provider
I've been a long time user of WHMCS, however, I'm looking to possibly migrate just because there are alternatives which seem a little more cost effective.

I'm looking at blesta, and I've seen the billing brawl sites, however, I think it's a little bit too subjective. I'd like some second opinions, anyone who has used both the softwares? Which one does everyone prefer?

Thanks!
 
KuJoe

KuJoe

Well-Known Member
Verified Provider
Blesta is a billing system with a help desk and that's it. If you want to run a real business with it you'll need to pair it with other software for any real accounting or metrics. WHMCS is the only complete system that doesn't really require anything else out of the box in its price range and if you're concerned about costs, you'll need to factor in the costs for the other software.


All of this is assuming you run a real business and care about growing your business and not relying on dumb luck of course. If it's just a hobby project or a little side job then Blest should fit your needs just fine.
 
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GIANT_CRAB

GIANT_CRAB

New Member
You might want to take a look at Nukern as well, it's a pretty interesting SaaS enterprise solution. 

For now, I still don't think Blesta is good enough to be up against WHMCS. 
 
Licensecart

Licensecart

Active Member
River said:
I've been a long time user of WHMCS, however, I'm looking to possibly migrate just because there are alternatives which seem a little more cost effective.

I'm looking at blesta, and I've seen the billing brawl sites, however, I think it's a little bit too subjective. I'd like some second opinions, anyone who has used both the softwares? Which one does everyone prefer?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Have a look at videos.blesta.com they have tutorials and good stuff which they gave us before the beta. (Some were after like Multicraft, etc).

In my opinion if you buy Blesta you are investing into the biggest and best billing system. It could be classed as one-sided but I've tried most systems minus Hostbill.

ClientExec admin area is confusing, they have improved it in their latest version but still weird.

WHMCS is full of security issues but it depends when someone leaks something or it will just be fixed when they get a bugcrowd report to do it.

WHSuite is ok, but buggy and weird, might have a future when the guys work full time on it.

Hostbill I've never tried it but it goes up in price faster than oil.
 
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River

River

Member
Verified Provider
Licensecart said:
Have a look at videos.blesta.com they have tutorials and good stuff which they gave us before the beta. (Some were after like Multicraft, etc).


In my opinion if you buy Blesta you are investing into the biggest and best billing system. It could be classed as one-sided but I've tried most systems minus Hostbill.


ClientExec admin area is confusing, they have improved it in their latest version but still weird.


WHMCS is full of security issues but it depends when someone leaks something or it will just be fixed when they get a bugcrowd report to do it.


WHSuite is ok, but buggy and weird, might have a future when the guys work full time on it.


Hostbill I've never tried it but it goes up in price faster than oil.
Click to expand...
I appreciate the input, however, I believe that you have a really subjective view. For full disclosure, I know that you sell blesta licenses and are a moderator on their forums; so of course you will be supporting blesta. In fact, I bought my license from you, so of course you will want to be talking it up.

I really want the bottom line, what works, what doesn't. I know that there has to be some drawbacks to blesta, so what are they? I'd like to know everything about it before investing in a package.
 
Hxxx

Hxxx

Active Member
I like the security part of blesta, however in my opinion setting up products is extremely complicated. Is like doing double work. You have to go elsewhere create something first, then go another section and create another thing, and this is because you can have custom stuff in blesta. Im a dev but even I for some reason got turned down by the customizability, sometimes you just want to create a simple product, just like you do in woocommerce or in any ecommerce//billing. Or maybe the product section is so weird i got confused LOL. I have seen whmcs , used it, CE, used it, all these ok, but when i went to blesta it feels weird.

Like lets do a menu... ok lets just put them like in a breadcrumb format. /this/thenthat/ok, feels vague.

Man how many times i have bought license Licensecart? I think I have bought blesta like more than 10 times from different places, many of them from licensecart(great service, maybe asking them would have been better, to make sure im looking the software in the right way) . However simple billing shouldn't be more complicated than quickbooks (oh man qbooks was so buggy, maybe the web versions are ok). If I take a look at the software and feel confused, how about my customers? This is so important.
 
River

River

Member
Verified Provider
Hxxx said:
I like the security part of blesta, however in my opinion setting up products is extremely complicated. Is like doing double work. You have to go elsewhere create something first, then go another section and create another thing, and this is because you can have custom stuff in blesta. Im a dev but even I for some reason got turned down by the customizability, sometimes you just want to create a simple product, just like you do in woocommerce or in any ecommerce//billing. Or maybe the product section is so weird i got confused LOL. I have seen whmcs , used it, CE, used it, all these ok, but when i went to blesta it feels weird.

Like lets do a menu... ok lets just put them like in a breadcrumb format. /this/thenthat/ok, feels vague.

Man how many times i have bought license Licensecart? I think I have bought blesta like more than 10 times from different places, many of them from licensecart(great service, maybe asking them would have been better, to make sure im looking the software in the right way) . However simple billing shouldn't be more complicated than quickbooks (oh man qbooks was so buggy, maybe the web versions are ok). If I take a look at the software and feel confused, how about my customers? This is so important.
Click to expand...
I like the client end of blesta, i think it was really nicely designed. However, I'm having trouble with editing the templates. There is a lot of complicated php, I really just want to copy my header from the other parts of my site onto the blesta templates and it's got a lot of php code that is tough to understand. I really don't want to pay someone to integrate it either.
 
Licensecart

Licensecart

Active Member
River said:
I appreciate the input, however, I believe that you have a really subjective view. For full disclosure, I know that you sell blesta licenses and are a moderator on their forums; so of course you will be supporting blesta. In fact, I bought my license from you, so of course you will want to be talking it up.

I really want the bottom line, what works, what doesn't. I know that there has to be some drawbacks to blesta, so what are they? I'd like to know everything about it before investing in a package.
Click to expand...
Yeah if can be looked like that because of that however I have used the software I stated haha, I was a WHMCS customer from 2008 - 2013 (I think a few weeks before their big exploits came around I migrated to Blesta 2.5). ClientExec I was helping a client migrate over manually and had to ask them how to do bits and bobs so I didn't break it (It was their old version however). But I agree I can look bias :) haha and thank you for your custom too :).

Hxxx said:
I like the security part of blesta, however in my opinion setting up products is extremely complicated. Is like doing double work. You have to go elsewhere create something first, then go another section and create another thing, and this is because you can have custom stuff in blesta. Im a dev but even I for some reason got turned down by the customizability, sometimes you just want to create a simple product, just like you do in woocommerce or in any ecommerce//billing. Or maybe the product section is so weird i got confused LOL. I have seen whmcs , used it, CE, used it, all these ok, but when i went to blesta it feels weird.
Click to expand...
Yeah it does from the start look like that I was the same, but later on you can see why, if you want Package stuff it's under packages, and if you want to do theming it's under Look and Feel under settings, etc :).

Hxxx said:
Man how many times i have bought license Licensecart? I think I have bought blesta like more than 10 times from different places, many of them from licensecart(great service, maybe asking them would have been better, to make sure im looking the software in the right way) . However simple billing shouldn't be more complicated than quickbooks (oh man qbooks was so buggy, maybe the web versions are ok). If I take a look at the software and feel confused, how about my customers? This is so important.
Click to expand...
Thank you for your custom Hxxx :).

River said:
I like the client end of blesta, i think it was really nicely designed. However, I'm having trouble with editing the templates. There is a lot of complicated php, I really just want to copy my header from the other parts of my site onto the blesta templates and it's got a lot of php code that is tough to understand. I really don't want to pay someone to integrate it either.
Click to expand...
Feel free to look at my tutorial on how to integrate Blesta to your website, it's pretty simple :) http://www.blesta.com/forums/index.php?/topic/3642-blesta-integration-33x-advanced/
 
HalfEatenPie

HalfEatenPie

The Irrational One
Retired Staff
By the way @licensecart, just FYI, you have a mispelling in your signature.  "Free integrations and Pre-Mde" should be changed to "Free Integrations and Pre-Made".  
 
A

Arty_K

New Member
You can also give check BILLmanager 5. The good part is that it's start-up friendly - you can download it and use for free till you reach the limit of 50 clients and be able to go for commercial license. 
 
M

Mike

New Member
Verified Provider
I've used WHMCS and I've used Blesta.  I think I've "looked" at ClientExec back in the day but didn't personally use it.

WHMCS has it's pros and it's cons.  I've chosen WHMCS (Owned License) simply because of it's ease of use and broad addon following.  It does have it's security caveats but what script doesn't?  Alright, WHMCS might not have been the brightest spark on the board back in the day but now with a following from cPanel (also not the brightest), at least things may be a bit smoother now, they've definitely improved on the updates schedule and fixing more bugs than ever before.

To reiterate my comment regarding "It does have it's security caveats but what script doesn't".  Every script at some point down the line will have a security exploit announced, if there was no such thing as exploits, big corporations that are there to prevent these kinds of exploits and attacks would be out of business (Businesses based around ModSec).

Blesta also doesn't have security before everything else as they too often post "Security Update" etc, so it's not fair to single out WHMCS vs. Blesta on security.  Blesta might fix their security bugs quicker than WHMCS but that doesn't mean that WHMCS is any less secure than Blesta.

People also need to remember that WHMCS hasn't been "Rewritten from the ground up" since it launched in 2005 so IMO they're doing a damn good job on how their updates are unfolding.  Blesta launched in 2007 I believe and was rewritten in 2011.

/rant

Blesta is good, just very confusing, IMO not easy to use and doesn't have a large addon following like WHMCS.
 
Licensecart

Licensecart

Active Member
WHMCS will never ever be secure. They have a custom PHP Register Global function at their core and localhost.re has told the world about it, so all a blackhat hacker has to do is decode and find a exploit, not tell them on bug crowd and then what? Blesta's was a few XSS what has WHMCS had? SQLInjection (they haven't told anyone on WHT who asked if it's fixed or not since the finder told everyone he was paid in 2015 so you believe it's being sorted since 2015 but no security patches since). URE found where WHMCS paid out $1,000 when they offer $5,000 maximum.

Two security experts went over Blesta and one of them found one of the XSS fixes you mentioned… one of them has given up on cPanel because they don't care either… so what help does that bring into that partnership.
 
M

Mike

New Member
Verified Provider
I understand your point on security, really I do.

However, if WHMCS and cPanel were as badly insecure as the "Anti-WHMCS and cPanel Crew" make them out to be, then why do they hold an 80%** market share?  Why haven't people automatically switched to Blesta or Interworx simply on the fact of security?  Simple answer is, Blesta and Interworx simply don't match up to the capabilities of WHMCS and cPanel without spending a fortune in additional customizations and addons.

Blesta is good if you are a developer or have a bottom-less pit for a bank.  WHMCS is good if you want to maximize profit and get on with business as usual.
 
P

Prestige

New Member
If you want something easy and fast to setup, go for WHMCS.

I personally prefer Blesta because you have control with the code (most of the code is unencrypted) and their API is fully documented with the models, etc.
 
E

Evolve Web Hosting

New Member
I will say that it's a different learning curve and it took me awhile to get everything setup the way I wanted it but I haven't looked back and said 'I wish I was still using WHMCS'. It can be a lot of work to get setup but once you're done with that, I think you'll be really happy. If you're starting it out as a fresh install, it will probably be a lot easier. I had a lot of changes that I wanted to make.

I will also say that Mike at Licensecart was a huge help as well. He's a great guy and very knowledgeable with Blesta.
 
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