I am developing a hosting billing software - Any suggestion?

[kunnu]

Hello,

I am developing a hosting billing software, Can you suggest me some points which can be helpful?

Our developers are working but need some suggestion that which features must for a normal basic billing software in starting? I am not going to release it for public use unless it will be audited by good security company but need some suggestion.

- Security tips (Like which is best company for security audit?)
- Improvement tips
- Software upgrade tips (Like how can I monitor software changes, upgrade, file changes in new version, Any good software which monitor this?)
- Pricing
- Any other suggestion?


update:
- @Mods: Seems I posted this in wrong section, If I am correct then please move it to correct section.

Thanks.

 

[Lee]

It would be better to start with telling us what you have done so far. What features are you going to implement and so on. Pricing is entirely dependant on what it offers and we don't know that.

 

[radwebhosting]

Easy integration and automation with other Hosting Software is probably the single most important facet of hosting billing software.

My first question would be "Does it make my life easier and enrich the user's overall experience?"

 

[Jared]

All the API calls and hooks. Literally all of them.

More seriously, there's always going to be something that half your customers are going to want to do different than the other half of them, and while impossible to plan for all of them, a lot of people (I may be biased here) are willing to do it themselves if there's a way to do it that doesn't break on updates. A then there's the few that will just redo it every update.

 

[WasNotWSS]

How much of your billing software will be designed as a turn-key? Will it handle the entire user data, billing, et-al? if you are planning on managing the userdata, ensure you have a clean API without pointless hooks for very simple user authentication via trusted communications (such as using a shared key/et al), and work on making the actual gateway plugin robust enough to not only handle it internally, but to allow handoffs (such as PayPal hosted pages).

 

[HBAndrei]

Oh boy, where to start, first of all are you sure you are up for such a big project? I don't mean to discourage you but a hosting billing panel that would compete with WHMCS/Blesta seems an incredibly big challenge to take on... you'd need teams of people to develop and test it, and I'd say that you would need quite a big investment fund to finance the entire project.

Again, I do not wish to discourage you, I just hope that you've asked yourself these questions and that you've got a business plan in place before you start pouring money into such a big project... So, I'd say this is the very first thing you need to work on.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[bsdguy]

Safety and security. Safety and security again. Safety and security once more.

And I don't mean the "best company for security audit?" kind ...

Which i.a. means: No apache/nginx, mysql, php, javascript.

 

[Jonathan]

Which i.a. means: No apache/nginx, mysql, php, javascript.

Using these items to run a system doesn't make it insecure, just like using something else doesn't inherently make it secure.

It's about code quality. I kinda see what you're getting at with PHP...but Apache/Nginx? MySQL? Really?

Find a modern site or billing panel these days that doesn't make use of javascript...

 

[bsdguy]

@Jonathan

Don't take this personal. You just happen to be the one who wrote what frighteningly many believe.

"Code quality"? To a high degree, indeed. But then, what is code quality?

IT Sec, and especially the design and implementation of safe and secure software happens to be my field. For a start, the vast majority of foss projects are of poor quality due to diverse factors. Please note that I do *not* propagate that closed software is somehow of quality merely by being closed source. But here in the given context we certainly talk mainly about foss.

It's important to understand what "good quality software" means. Most seem to mix up "good quality" and "widely used" or "open source" or "[insert well known person] is behind it!". Nope, wrong. In a soft sense it means the absence of gross errors and problems; a look at the records of most software quickly demonstrates that usually not even that soft definition is met.
A harder - and way more useful and tangible - definition is the *provable and verified* absence of errors, bugs, bad design, etc. Which boils down to that pretty much all (not all but the vast majority) software in C is between not safe and crap. Simple reason: C can not even be verified as it's definition is ambiguous (as is demonstrated by compiler A complaining where compiler B is happy). There are many other factors such as e.g. modularity or plainly size; The less code the more manageable and less bugs (as a general rule).
Another major problem with foss is that there is often no "chain of command" but rather a hodgepodge of many pieces of code of quite different quality; even worse, there is often not even a proper design but rather a "hack along" mentality.

Maybe that's no problem and tolerable with your average web site. After all gazillions of website some work more or less with LAMP/NAMP, etc. But here we are talking about a security sensitive application with a by far more sensitive nature. Where on some website, oh well, an email address and a username may be captured, with a payment system we're talking about real-world and quite sensitive info like credit card data being in jeopardy.

Moreover and btw. if the disaster happens you want to be in a good position legally. For instance, most civilized states demand that such software undertakes reasonable steps to protect the users data. Using LAMP, however, would mean that experts in courts (I have done that sometimes) will rip you apart and shred you to pieces. With LAMP you risk *serious* legal and financial consequences.

 

[CenTex Hosting]

What do you have built into it already? Really depends on who you are going to target with it.

For providers that own hardware. I would say
Inventory manager
Server Manager
OS installer
Rack management
COLO management

These would give a great addition to the basic account system

 

[webhostuk]

Easy to integrate with WHM/Cpanel or plesk Control panel so that billing automation of account creation ,termination , server setup and resource management can be done via Billing panel.

 

[kunnu]

Which feature is must required for basic billing panel which can be easy for any provider to use?

I mean, PayPal, cPanel + WHM, SolusVM, Support system, and any other recommendation?