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!