Blesta 2.1 released, plus DA exclusive discount

pphillips

Verified User
Joined
Aug 27, 2007
Messages
8
Location
Tustin, CA
Blesta is a web based billing application quickly gaining popularity all around the world. It is the most professional, most secure billing application of its kind on the market today.

Website: http://www.blesta.com
Demo: http://demo.blesta.com
Free Trial: https://www.blesta.com/order/2/44

*If you order a paid copy, use coupon code "DA" for 25% off (first month only on monthly licenses)

Our 2.1 release adds Windows support, now Blesta runs on Linux and Windows running Apache or IIS. Blesta is highly object oriented and is the first billing application to require PHP 5 at launch.

Features:

  • Automatic recurring billing
  • Automatic payment processing
  • Email or Paper invoice methods
  • Streamlined manual payment entry
  • Built in ticket system, with email piping support
  • Integration with DirectAdmin and more!
  • Integration with gateways like Authorize.net, Quantum, PayPal and more!
  • .. way more, you got to check out the demo

Developers:

  • Extensive API over JSON or PHP serialization
  • Internationalized interface, create your own language files
  • Completely editable templates, for everything
  • Open module, gateway, invoice and anti-fraud systems

Security

  • 256-bit AES encryption cipher used for credit card data
  • Remote access key required for cron jobs and API access
  • Ability to lock down API access to an IP address
  • Does not require any publicly accessible directories to be writable (chmod 777)
  • Runs with register_globals OFF
  • MySQL queries are protected against SQL injection
  • Lots more behind the scenes

We take a proactive not a reactive approach to security.

We are real people, we have a real office with a real phone. We all work here, this allows us to give you the best support possible. Want to speak with our lead developer? No problem.

We realize that no billing application is a good fit for everyone, if we don't think Blesta is right for you - we'll tell you.

If you made it this far down the page, I'm feeling special. Remember, check out the demo - if you like it, download the trial. Have questions? Give us a call, hit up our forums, or drop us an email.

Cheers!

Paul
 
Hello,

How does Blesta work with Direct Admin?

If I will create an account on Direct Admin will it be automatically added into Blesta?

If no then what does the Direct Admin module do?

Thanks in advance.

PS: I added you on my msn.
 
pphillips,

I,too, would like to see more about exactly what Blesta will do with DirectAdmin. I'm very interested in your solution, and I'm making a decision in the immediate future, but I can't find a list of what you do and don't do specifically with DirectAdmin, anywhere on your site. The dearth of questions about DirectAdmin in your forum leads me to believe you may not have a lot of DirectAdmin users yet.

If the product fits my needs I'm happy to help you resolve that :), but I'd really like to avoid spending the time on installing the trial if it's not going to fit my needs.

Talk to us :D.

Thanks.

Jeff
 
Hi guys!

Sorry for the delay in my response, to you especially panosru, I thought I was subscribed to the thread, but I guess not.

Our DA module allows for the automatic creation, deletion, suspension, and unsuspension of hosting accounts on your DirectAdmin servers. Accounts can be created through an order form automatically, or after approval and directly through the admin area. Accounts that are behind in payment can be automatically suspended - and automatically unsuspended when paid up.

Creating an account in DirectAdmin doesn't create it in Blesta, but adding it through Blesta creates it in DirectAdmin automatically - and sets up the recurring billing for that account. Any term between 1 month and 999 months will work, with the most common being 1, 3, 6, and 12 of course. Blesta automatically invoices recurring services and can also automatically charge the customers credit card. You can create order forms that clients can place orders for DirectAdmin hosting through.

I hope I answered your questions. If there is anything I can do for you, please let me know.

Thanks,

Paul
 
Last edited:
First off; Blesta looks interesting. Though as everyone, I have some questions as well.

We are still on MBv4, where I think lots of others may also. Are there any options available to convert our running billing software to Blesta? Ie. client and package information.

Is it possible to create custom gateway modules? I honestly doubt your interest in developing these modules since they are specifically designed for our offline administration. They handle both bank transfers as an online gateway module which is only available in our country.

Besides custom gateways, we have custom registrar modules as well. Can these be implemented within Blesta?

Since MBv4 development has come to a halt, we have been developing custom solutions for many situations. For instance, we allow remote reboots, rDNS management and other services through our customer area. What are our options with Blesta? Is it possible to implement these features easilly? Can we add certain features based on packages (like bandwidth for dedicated servers, mailserver management for our business mail solution)? Is it also possible to add features in the admin area of Blesta?

Our Modernbill installation is linked with Kayako. Will this be something to be considered in the future? Is it possible to disable your ticket system?

As you can see, we use a highly customized billing solution. Can you deal with these situations as well? Dedicated/colocated server management could be a welcome addition to many by the way.
 
And I've just remembered another need. Until recently we had several domain reseller accounts: one with Dotster, two with Enom, and one with PlanetDomains. Why? Because they came with several small webhost companies we've bought out over the years.

But now we've started building our own platform, using LogicBoxes at first. LogicBoxes is a division of DirectI, and perhaps best known as the technology behind ResellerClub, it's much more than a technology partner; it's been an irreplaceable enabler to many small to medium-sized businesses becoming Domain Registrars.

So another need of ours is the ability to interface with the LogicBoxes platform, and later with our own platform, for domain registration and management.

Jeff
 
First off; Blesta looks interesting. Though as everyone, I have some questions as well.

We are still on MBv4, where I think lots of others may also. Are there any options available to convert our running billing software to Blesta? Ie. client and package information.

Is it possible to create custom gateway modules? I honestly doubt your interest in developing these modules since they are specifically designed for our offline administration. They handle both bank transfers as an online gateway module which is only available in our country.

Besides custom gateways, we have custom registrar modules as well. Can these be implemented within Blesta?

Since MBv4 development has come to a halt, we have been developing custom solutions for many situations. For instance, we allow remote reboots, rDNS management and other services through our customer area. What are our options with Blesta? Is it possible to implement these features easilly? Can we add certain features based on packages (like bandwidth for dedicated servers, mailserver management for our business mail solution)? Is it also possible to add features in the admin area of Blesta?

Our Modernbill installation is linked with Kayako. Will this be something to be considered in the future? Is it possible to disable your ticket system?

As you can see, we use a highly customized billing solution. Can you deal with these situations as well? Dedicated/colocated server management could be a welcome addition to many by the way.

Yes, there is an import script for ModernBill, however it is for version 5.2. If it doesn't work, or doesn't import everything in properly we can write a new export for your version, most likely at no charge.

Without knowing detailed information on everything you've done to MB it's impossible to say for sure whether it is all possible with Blesta. With that said, it probably is, we do as much as we can to support developers. All modules, gateway, templates, language, anti-fraud, invoice format is all open source and we have documentation on creating modules. We also have a fairly extensive API, and are continuously adding to it. We can also provide sample pages so that you can create your own pages in Blesta to extend functionality.

To what level is Kayako integrated? We would consider Kayako integration, and the built in support system can be disabled by commenting out code in the templates.


And I've just remembered another need. Until recently we had several domain reseller accounts: one with Dotster, two with Enom, and one with PlanetDomains. Why? Because they came with several small webhost companies we've bought out over the years.

But now we've started building our own platform, using LogicBoxes at first. LogicBoxes is a division of DirectI, and perhaps best known as the technology behind ResellerClub, it's much more than a technology partner; it's been an irreplaceable enabler to many small to medium-sized businesses becoming Domain Registrars.

So another need of ours is the ability to interface with the LogicBoxes platform, and later with our own platform, for domain registration and management.

Jeff

We have looked at directi and partially written a module for it but we ran into a problem with the way they process registrations. In short, their documentation states that if they are unable to process a request, they will return an error response, and then attempt the process at a later time. More on this in the last post in this thread http://www.blesta.com/forums/showthread.php?t=360

We may finish the DirectI module, I'd love to add them, but unless they change this policy, or have a way to disable it - or we are misunderstanding their position we can't release the module with Blesta, but may consider releasing it on our forum as unsupported.

A representative from Directi contacted us and asked us if we could implement DirectI. When we expressed concern over this, they said they would put us in contact with their developers, but never did.

I'm not sure what the differences are between DirectI and LogicBoxes - DirectI seems to have many names, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible for you (or us) to write a module using LogicBoxes or your own implementation thereof.

You can find my needs and wants in this post. How many of them can you fulfill? ;)

Jeff

That's a hefty list of requirements. I don't know of any billing app that meets all of your expectations, including Blesta, but I'll try my best to respond to each point.


We want a standalone interface with full connectivity to the DirectAdmin API.

I'm not familiar with all the DA API commands, but would consider our implementation a partial integration. Create / Delete / Suspend / Unsuspend


We want the ability to set up anniversary date as well as month-to-month billing, and the ability, in both cases, to add charges any time before the billing date, all to be billed at the same time.

The ability to globally set services to renew on a specific date is coming along with proration in a future version of Blesta, what version is yet to be determined. We have no plans at this time to "queue up" additional charges to be invoiced at the same time, however you can create manual invoices and set the due dates such that they are charged at the same time.


We want the ability to use either invoices, statements, or both, on a per-account basis.

Blesta supports invoices, not statements at this time, though invoices can be viewed at anytime including after they are paid and could be considered statements.. though they are not represented as such. This is something we are open to implementing in a future release, though we have not had many requests for it.


We want the ability to use multiple currencies, on a per-account basis.

Multi-currency support is coming in our next release, version 2.2.


We want the ability to create several distinct offering/upgrade/downgrade paths for different departments (i.e., if we operate under two different sites, and one site is high priced, we don't want our clients creating a higher-priced product to be offered lower-priced products, and vice-versa).

We would need more information on this, but if I understand properly, you could have order forms running on different sites, on different servers that have packages with different price points that are all provisioned through 1 copy of Blesta.


We want the program to allow us to select from multiple servers, either based on packages, or on average server load over time, or on space left on servers, or number of accounts on servers, or on any combination of above, automatically, at account creation time.

We will be extending the functionality surrounding how a module row (or server) is selected for account provision soon. Currently Blesta will add accounts to the first server until it has reached the max accounts value you set. If you manually approve orders however, you can select the server to provision on.


We want to save all cc information properly stored according to the requirements of all credit card companies, but with the ability to see them (perhaps by entering a pin-number, as ModernBill does it).

Blesta stores CC numbers encrypted with 256-bit AES cipher. Card numbers can only be displayed in the Admin area by pasting in the key.


We want to save ALL prior information for a new client each time new information is entered, reachable by searching a separate client database.

Blesta does not currently do this, information is currently overwritten. However this isn't a bad idea and if we receive enough requests for this we will consider implementing it.


We want to know that the accounting done in the package is done according to recognized accounting standards in our country (in our case the United States of America).

We do our best to account for things properly, but I cannot say for sure it is done according to recognized standards. With that said, there is a record of all payments and how much of each payment was applied to which invoices. Invoices can be partially paid with multiple payments and any over-payments are automatically added as credits. There is always a record of what money went where.


Yes these are all real needs. And if the package existed today we'd seriously consider buying it today ... IF ... and this is the biggest requirement of all ... the company offering the product can offer us:

A proven and trackable track record in writing and maintaining acounting packages, a good proven and trackable record of security and when necessary almost immediate security fixes, a 24/7 support desk including telephone support for times when it's absolutely required (when you're accounting program is down and you're stuck in Los Angeles traffic absolutely no other method will do).

A proven track record is somewhat subjective, you'll have to make your own call on that. We offer 24/7 support via our ticket system, though only high priority cases will be responded to off hours. We are available over the phone from 8am-4pm pacific time M-F.

So of course we may never get what we want.

Hey, at least you're realistic!
 
We have looked at directi and partially written a module for it but we ran into a problem with the way they process registrations. In short, their documentation states that if they are unable to process a request, they will return an error response, and then attempt the process at a later time. More on this in the last post in this thread http://www.blesta.com/forums/showthread.php?t=360

We may finish the DirectI module, I'd love to add them, but unless they change this policy, or have a way to disable it - or we are misunderstanding their position we can't release the module with Blesta, but may consider releasing it on our forum as unsupported.

A representative from Directi contacted us and asked us if we could implement DirectI. When we expressed concern over this, they said they would put us in contact with their developers, but never did.
Other companies work with the LogicBoxes platform (that's it's marketing name); I don't know why you can't. I've asked a gent who runs DirectAdmin and is a current LogicBoxes-based registrar, to read the post and see if he can help you.
I'm not sure what the differences are between DirectI and LogicBoxes - DirectI seems to have many names, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible for you (or us) to write a module using LogicBoxes or your own implementation thereof.
My understanding is that it's the same. We'll see what my friend will say.
That's a hefty list of requirements. I don't know of any billing app that meets all of your expectations
Nor do I :).
I'll try my best to respond to each point.

I'm not familiar with all the DA API commands, but would consider our implementation a partial integration. Create / Delete / Suspend / Unsuspend
There are many people who will say that's not enough, because it doesn't allow upgrades/downgrades. For me that's not an issue.
The ability to globally set services to renew on a specific date is coming along with proration in a future version of Blesta, what version is yet to be determined.
If you do month-to-month from start-date, that works for us now on hosting, but not on our monthly service plans.
We have no plans at this time to "queue up" additional charges to be invoiced at the same time, however you can create manual invoices and set the due dates such that they are charged at the same time.
This will work for us as long as an invoice isn't sent when we create it. Can actually sending the invoices be turned off?
Blesta supports invoices, not statements at this time, though invoices can be viewed at anytime including after they are paid and could be considered statements.. though they are not represented as such. This is something we are open to implementing in a future release, though we have not had many requests for it.
No, an invoice cannot be considered a statement; a statement is a list of open invoice. I know this is the way everyone does it we've had a lot of clients get confused. Especially those who pay manually (PayPal, for example) who don't want to have to pay a dozen small invoices any more than we want to pay a dozen small service charges.
Multi-currency support is coming in our next release, version 2.2.
Glad to hear that.
We would need more information on this, but if I understand properly, you could have order forms running on different sites, on different servers that have packages with different price points that are all provisioned through 1 copy of Blesta.
The big issue with this was for software that allows upgrading/downgrading, because then people could choose products within the billing program that we didn't want to offer them. Since you don't offer upgrades/downgrades, for us this will work.
We will be extending the functionality surrounding how a module row (or server) is selected for account provision soon. Currently Blesta will add accounts to the first server until it has reached the max accounts value you set. If you manually approve orders however, you can select the server to provision on.
Works for us.
Blesta stores CC numbers encrypted with 256-bit AES cipher. Card numbers can only be displayed in the Admin area by pasting in the key.
Works for us. As of the last time I looked (about a week ago) there were no billing packages approved as PCI compliant; maybe you can be the first :).
Blesta does not currently do this, information is currently overwritten. However this isn't a bad idea and if we receive enough requests for this we will consider implementing it.
We like it in case someone types in a mistake; we don't want to lose all records of the client's real contact information.
We do our best to account for things properly, but I cannot say for sure it is done according to recognized standards. With that said, there is a record of all payments and how much of each payment was applied to which invoices. Invoices can be partially paid with multiple payments and any over-payments are automatically added as credits. There is always a record of what money went where.
Works for us :). I'm old-fashioned and love double-entry accounting, but I understand why it's no longer required.
A proven track record is somewhat subjective, you'll have to make your own call on that. We offer 24/7 support via our ticket system, though only high priority cases will be responded to off hours. We are available over the phone from 8am-4pm pacific time M-F.
Which is better than many companies.
Hey, at least you're realistic!
As you can see from my responses, above, always :).

But I do know what I want; I've actually been responsible for several accounting packages for computers back in the days of CP/M, I've been connected with an Enrolled Agent accounting and tax firm (you can't be a partner if you're not an Enrolled Agent, and I'm not), and I was a Sr. Analyst at the largest independent Mortgage Bank in the U.S. in the early 90s. Again: I know what I want ;).

Thanks, you've been helpful. I'm going to try to get the time to call you today or tomorrow.

Jeff
 
There are many people who will say that's not enough, because it doesn't allow upgrades/downgrades. For me that's not an issue.

Of course, but the good news is that upgrades/downgrades are on the way. We want to implement proration first though, because this feature is highly dependent upon that. No point in a customer upgrading a service and not being charged for the difference. Performing an upgrade or downgrade can be done manually currently by editing the service and by performing the action separately on your DA server.


This will work for us as long as an invoice isn't sent when we create it. Can actually sending the invoices be turned off?

During the invoice creation process there is a deliver check box. If this is not checked, the invoice will not be delivered. Additionally you can disable email templates on a per template basis, but this method is global.


Works for us. As of the last time I looked (about a week ago) there were no billing packages approved as PCI compliant; maybe you can be the first .

We'd like to be PA-DSS certified, but there is a significant cost in doing so. So, our shorter term goal is to become PA-DSS compliant. We're good on most points, but there are some minor issues we need to tackle, it's definitely on our radar. We've always taken a common sense approach to security, but as you probably know, the standards the credit card companies have come up with are pretty aggressive.


We like it in case someone types in a mistake; we don't want to lose all records of the client's real contact information.

Of course, makes perfect sense. Currently you'd have to rely on backups, which obviously is not ideal. I'll check into this, I agree it's needed.

Talk to you soon

Paul
 
For us, if upgrades/downgrades become available we'd need to have the ability turn them off, or better, departments, so people who have their choice of products in the "A" column won't even be able to see the "B" column, and so forth.

Good to hear about invoices; but since there are no statements how do we notify them at the end of the month of what they owe?

Legacy address information: backups are a problem, since we bill monthly we don't know if the address was put in incorrectly until we try it a month later. We keep backups over a month on our billing systems, but who wants to dig into a package to try to find it. Not us :).

The way we've done it in the past is have a totally separate database for the names and addresses; the key is the custcode and the entry date. Then the system automatically uses the most recent entry date unless you need to look up one that's earlier. We always kept forever, but realistically it's not required, especially if you keep hard copies (pdf?) of invoices with the old information on it.

Thanks!

Jeff
 
Thank you for your answers. I've sent you an e-mail with more details and about what we are looking for exactly.

Blesta is really an option we are considering at the moment. Sooner than I thought to be honest. We weren't really looking to replace our current solution just yet. Blesta looks promising.
 
Thank you for your answers. I've sent you an e-mail with more details and about what we are looking for exactly.

Blesta is really an option we are considering at the moment. Sooner than I thought to be honest. We weren't really looking to replace our current solution just yet. Blesta looks promising.

Thanks, I did get your email. Quite a bit there, I'll get you a reply today with as much as I can and CC Cody our lead developer who can fill in any loose ends. I'm going to be traveling out of state this afternoon and will have limited web access for the next week or so, but Cody will be available.
 
Great Paul, thanks for the reply. I'm sorry about the length, my fingers hurt after finishing it. I'll try and keep it shorter from now on :)
 
Back
Top