Choosing the billing system for your web hosting business (part 1)

Any modern business needs a proper billing system. Sure, you can still use cash, but even if you have a very basic retail trade business you usually need to be able to accept credit cards and at least Google Pay and Apple Pay. Accepting PayPal, Samsung Pay and some other popular payment systems may also be helpful. And if we are talking about web hosting, cash is usually not even an option, so you have to accept online payments via as many methods and systems as possible.

Basic functionality of billing management systems for web hosts

Billing systems designed for web hosting usually have some specific functionality not available in billing systems created for any other type of business. Traditional billing systems should be able to carry out automatic sales of your products and services, keep records about the clients, their accounts, and orders, form detailed reports about them, accrue partner rewards, organize promotions, support clients, and more. A specialized billing system for web hosting should be able to do the same, plus:

• automatically sell hosting and reselling services for virtual private servers, gaming, voice, and dedicated servers;
• provide registration of domain names;
• sell SSL certificates;
• provide IPTV services and be able to receive payments for them;
• resell licenses for various adjacent software.

How to choose?

Only several payment methods, like those mentioned above, are widely available around the world, but there are literally hundreds of local payment systems, used in specific countries and regions. And that’s why there are so many billing systems. So, it is especially important to choose a system created or tuned for your target area of operation. While choosing the billing system for your hosting business, it is worth analyzing the following features:

• general and specific functionality of the system;
• supported payment methods and systems, including local payment systems of your region;
• reliability, security, and support;
• availability and frequency of updates;
• support of different web hosting control panels, like cPanel, Plesk, Webmin, and others;
• the price of the system.

Which billing system to choose?

There are some free billing systems for hosting, but they usually support only a small number of clients, like up to 50, and have limited functionality in general. So, we are going to consider only commercial options. And there are so many of them: