Billing panel with reseller level- whos intrested?

As many here have heard WHMCS has teamed up with Cpanel. Now this in itself in not a bad thing, but when I got into the hosting game in 2003, I started with Hsphere. Hsphere had a lot of great features and a lot of issues , but the one feature it had was a reseller level in the integrated billing system that allowed resellers to chose their own templates, upload a logo and manage their clients... At the same time giving me, the admin full control.
I am in talks with http://thehostingtool.com to work with me on modifying and adapting their product to a 3 level system that would allow complete control of the billing and provisioning of all levels of accounts.
This would fit seamlessly with Directadmin and support resellers selling resellers too.
I would like to have this primarily a Directadmin related product and have the DA community helping develop it.
Any interest??
PS this would eliminate the need for multiple licenses for each reseller and admin control to absorb clients if resellers disappear of transfers from reseller to reseller.

I've read your link. I still don't know what TheHostingTool is supposed to do. This is a common problem with many free and opensource projects. I do note, however that they offer more complete support for cPanel than for DirectAdmin, but I see no easy way to see the difference.

The most important part of this project would be billing, but I don't see any information anywhere about payment modules; without them it seems we'd still need something else.

That said, you wrote that this in itself is not a bad thing but I can't help but wonder if it is; I remember when the most successful billing program out there was ModernBill (I still own three licenses), but they were bought out by Parallels (the same folk who bought H-Sphere) and quickly became a non-player.

Here's the paragraph from the WHMCS site that worries me, from: http://blog.whmcs.com/?t=51686

Finally, these two giants of the web hosting industry are coming together. With the goal of creating a more integrated solution for web hosting providers, cPanel, Inc., and WHMCS Ltd. have recently announced a new partnership to deliver a more cohesive solution that includes both control panel functionality and billing.

Click to expand...

It's that more integrated solution which I'm concerned might leave those of us now using WHMCS high and dry without our solution.

And all that said, it's easy enough to sell a package with a multi-level solution (as did H-Sphere) when you price by the number of accounts, much harder when you're a a small project developed by only a few users. Just look around at the skins and plugins for DirectAdmin which end up non-supported over the years. Frankly, I don't see how I could trust the most important part of my business (my clients) to a small free project. Unless I was a major part of that project. But of course that's me. You may feel differently.

As an aside, H-Sphere is another one of those great projects which seems to have gone downhill after being acquired by Parallels; it was originally developed by the same man who has since given us Cloud Linux: http://cloudlinux.com/managementteam.html

Jeff

Wow so glad I didnt buy it now!

Jeff...

Firstly, thehostingtool, is essentially a WHMCS replacement in its infancy
As for your questions and concerns, This would be a stand alone product like other billing solutions but with an added reseller level.
It will be developed on a directadmin server as an open source project.
I want it for DIRECT ADMIN, however if there are other versions develop, so be it.
I fully agree WHMCS will not be the best thing for Directadmin once Cpanel gets fully involved, but my motivation will be mainly in features that will be useful to us the web host, not features that increase license sales or sales of mods etc.
I do not want this to be just another billing system, I want it to be "the billing" system that if you use DA you will also want to have.
The current version stresses Cpanel, only because that is what Kevin had available to him
This project will be on a box live and open to developers within 2 weeks.
If there are any features you would like to see, please list them
Paul

Well, Paul, since you asked :

1. I don't care if there is or isn't a reseller level; if I'm supplying a reseller level billing/configuration system I'm going to be yelled at when something doesn't work, I'm going to be found responsible when a credit card is stolen, etc. So I won't be using it. I'd prefer to link to someone else's product or products, and perhaps make some money as a partner, but not sell it. However, that's just me.

2. It's worthless to me unless it supports the following: PayPal, PayPal Pro, Authorize.net, at least another coice or two which offers the option of saving card info offsite.

3. Preferably a choice of sending invoices on each sale, with cards charged for each sale, monthly statements with cards charged monthly, and a combination of invoices with cards charged for each sale, and monthly recap statements.

I've probably posted more previously on these forums.

And as far as helping, while I don't program in any modern language sufficiently secure enough to program this kind of a project, I have lots of experience in design and development of accounting systems, and can help with the design and testing scenarios.

Jeff

my intrest

My interest is mainly in the reseller level, But I agree if we are building something for everyone, we should be able to design something so features can be enabled by those that want and disabled by those who do not want them.
The reseller level I am referring to would appear fully re-branded by the reseller and the billing modules would also treat their transactions separately, like they were just using a parallel install of the script.
It would just allow me to offer the reseller a ready to go business for 1 low price each month.

So far no interest? There should be interest if this is to work. I'm in touch with the lead developer, and I'd be happy to get involved if this is going to go somewhere. But for me to be interested it needs to be full service.

So let's see some interest.

Jeff