AccountLab FREE billing application for web hosts

Today we have released the ALPHA2 version of AccountLab with built-in support for Directadmin account creation/suspension and unsuspension.

It is alpha so not for production use yet.

AccountLab is a billing and provisioning application for web hosts full details can be found at http://accountlab.com

Highlights:

AccountLab can lookup over 180 TLD's, have unlimited hosting plans, offer monthly, quarterly, six monthly and yearly payment options, handle tax.

AccountLab works with PayPal, WorldPay (FuturePay), NoChex, 2checkout and offline payments such as checks or bank transfer.

Unique fraud scoring. AccountLab screens to sift through your online charges and flag potentially fraudulent transactions.

One click register domains and account setup from within AccountLab. Plugin to Plesk, Cpanel, Directadmin, Enom and Directi.

You need to register at our site to download your copy.

Will the program be free after it has been stabalized and is ready for production use? If not, what kind of price range are we talking about. A comparison chart between the other billing soluctions such as whoiscart, Modernbill, and Agilebill might be nice.

Yes the free version will continue to be available, we will also be launching a paid version for $49.95 and an unlimited internal licence (reseller) version for $49.95 per month.

We will look into a comparison chart.

Gary

Very Interesting!

IMHO....
it has a neat, simple layout for admin and user and is V simple to install and setup (took me 1 hr including full site integration)

I like simple But... I need to be able to create resellers and sell our dedicated servers, and I'm not sure the users can amend their DNS We won't go back to changing clients DNS for them - it's unnecessarily manual!!

The billing and domain reg modules are brainlessly simple to use

I'd also like to see an affiliate program installed and a voucher system.

I have to say ths is by far the easiest and simplest billing system I have seen so far.

I hope you go on to keep it simple but add a few features which most businesses would consider necessary if they are to use it in a live environment.

Rob

Rob,

The affiliate and voucher system are in the mix so hopefully you will see them shortly.

I need to be able to create resellers and sell our dedicated servers, and I'm not sure the users can amend their DNS We won't go back to changing clients DNS for them - it's unnecessarily manual!!

Click to expand...

We are really interested in enabling reseller, vps and dedicated servers into the system, we are already working on the Virtuozzo module. As for resellers and dedicated could you give me some more feedback on what you would like to see the system be able to do. What we want to do initially is at least have the key tasks covered as we can always build from there.

Gary

Hi Gary,

I'd need it to simply set up a reseller account live like the users (which I haven't fully tested yet - but it looks like it does it??)

Thats all - I'm unsure how familiar with DA you are but in the same way as the reseller account username and password are added to the accountlab system at the moment - it would need to be the admins username and password added with the reseller package name and an account set up.

A great feature would be resellers being able to integrate their users into the same system (with your internal licence maybe and admin them from there)

For dedicateds we have a contract/setup form that we require completion of and obviously we cannot set this up automatically.

The thing I really liked about your system is the simplicity of the interface and I think this will be a great advantage above other panels if you can add at least automation for user and reseller setup.

For dedicateds I would just email them the contract.

Also I'd like the ability to email the invoices as text emails.

Hope this helps a bit

Rob

Rob,

You're right I'm not as familiar with DA as say Plesk or Cpanel, I've not used DA in production so trying to get a handle how you guys implement your different types of accounts.

The point I'm stuck with at the moment is reseller packages. When you create a reseller package you also set the number of IP's a reseller would get under that package? If yes, does DA auto assign free IP's to the reseller at time of creation. I'm assuming it does and if it does, it creates two questions:

1) Do we set the IP to shared, sharedreseller or assign, those are the three options the API gives us when creating a reseller. I'm sure there isn't an answer to this as everyone will be different.

2) We would have to create the reseller, then connect back to DA to get the IP's it used

Gary

I must say I'm quite impressed, but from a designer's point of view, I think the order forms have a lot of room for improvement.

The problem is that the customer has to select things like the hosting package by clicking on a link which updates another part of the page - it's a little confusing I think.

It'd be better IMHO if the customer was presented with the options step-by-step (e.g. one page for which domain to use, one page for package selection, next page for personal details).

Hope that helps,
Matt

accountlab said:

Rob,

1) Do we set the IP to shared, sharedreseller or assign, those are the three options the API gives us when creating a reseller. I'm sure there isn't an answer to this as everyone will be different.

2) We would have to create the reseller, then connect back to DA to get the IP's it used

Gary

Click to expand...

Hi Gary,

Within the control panel if you set up a new reseller with an assigned IP DA automatically allocates an available ip.

I'm unsure if the API needs this specified or not - thats not my field I'm afraid, but there are some very well qualified people around the forum that will hopefully read the thread and advise you.

If you need to specify an IP then a simple work around could be to have a list/bank of unassigned IP's within the reseller module in the accountlabs control panel that matches the (list in the DA admin control panel) that could be assigned on setup and then removed from the accountlab ip allocation list negating the need to return back to DA for that reason.

@Thoroughfare..

I heard from a trusted source that stats that show limiting an orderform to one page increases sales. So I agree that there is room for improvement on the order form and I read that there maybe a few different templates coming out - I would err towards keeping it to one page if at all possible - but hey - 90% of people don't believe statistics

Rob

Rob, thanks for the feedback, we will start the reseller module and put it out for testing.

On the order page question it really is strange, when we first designed this it was multiple pages (5 I think, or could have been 6) and the user went from page to page adding what they needed, it also was designed to mimic the admin side design.

I then got some hosts and some customers to take a look, every single host firstly liked the order process but hated the fact the design wasn't simple so it could be changed to their site. So we made the change to make it plain html and css driven. Customers however hated the step by step process and just about all of them wanted a single page. with everything on it. The main reason they disliked the steps was the need to keep going back and not being able to see what's available all at once.

For instance if it was separate pages if a user added their domain, went to the next page and picked a plan, went to the next page to pick a payment cycle, only to find monthly isn't available for that plan they have to go back and so on...

So, we went with what customers wanted and changed it to a single page.

Rob mentioned some stats and I'm not sure if it's the same as we saw, but macromedia did a huge research project into customer experience and the outcome of that was 'single page order forms increase sales'.

We actually have a Flash version of the order form sitting here, however it brings in a few security issues so it won't be released for a while.

We will be turning the order page into components that you guys can drop into your html wherever you want which should give you a bit more control over it.

The new order system components are available for testing here

http://www.forum.accountlab.com/showthread.php?t=54

This allows you to place the sections any way you want on your webpage so gives a lot more flexibility to the order form

Gary

Hi!
I download Your billing system today and I in impress
I have 3 problems

1) I'm from Poland (as my customers).... Can I change default country in Order?
2) Can I change text Mounth for Miesiacy?
3) Can You add one option? Test account.... When test time (7 days?) will expired then panel must suspend users..... Can you do it??

Regards

1) I'm from Poland (as my customers).... Can I change default country in Order?

Click to expand...

At present no but we will look at adding that option

Can I change text Mounth for Miesiacy?

Click to expand...

That is the only thing which cannot be changed in the order system language files at present, because some of the logic works from it but we are working on that.

3) Can You add one option? Test account.... When test time (7 days?) will expired then panel must suspend users..... Can you do it??

Click to expand...

We can certainly look at that yes.

Thanks for the feedback.

Gary

does it...

Hi,

I'm just installing my new server for colo and about to buy a DA license and instalatron license and would like to find out more about this billing plugin.

Will it allow for billing per CMS application a user uses from instaltron?
Will it allow me to add billing for other things, such as domain registration (i'd register it via directadmin.co.nz and then mark it in DA as a billable feature).
Will it let me bill users for hardware and other stuff not related to DA (i.e. a monthly reoccoring thing).

Is there a demo or screenshots somewhere?

Thanks
Barry