Introduction
Are you looking for billing software, Either as an existing user of alternative software OR a new entrant to the market? Well, Today we’ll be covering the basics of Blesta – Let us know if you want more in-depth articles!
What does billing software do?
A good billing software allows a company to manage their clients accounts, Automatically invoice and collect payment. This is typically paired with automation of online services and account based access to the licensee’s service. Most commonly used in hosting and server deployment but can also be used alongside VOIP, Hosted Gaming servers, Radio and Voice hosting and even broadband sales/management.
What makes Blesta stand out from the crowd?
Taken from Blesta.com:
Blesta is well-written, open, and developer friendly; It is no wonder it has become the first choice among a growing number of hosting providers worldwide.
Blesta has a 99% open code base according to their website (It’s actually higher than that at nearly 99.6% by my estimation) This – unlike any other gives unfettered access to each component and possible thing you would ever need to edit or manipulate to your will! Furthermore it has a range of possible extensions in the form of modules, plugins and payment gateways to customise your installation to your needs.
One thing I did notice during my month usage was the way in which you add products, Overwhelming at first but it’s quite possibly the most powerful solution on the market! It takes a little getting used to but once you grasp the concept it’s remarkably simple to list thousands of products each with their own variations of billing terms and configurable options. During this month I managed to try Stripe and PayPal in test mode as well as The SSL Store and a new virtualisation tool for servers called VirtFusion. There’s loads of options out there but we were working on a budget! If you would like to see more in-depth reviews or discussion on specific parts of the software or any plugins feel free to reach out at our contact page. If you’re a developer and can send us a time-limited or test license to your software we will happily try it and review it! We don’t offer paid reviews, Or allow editorials of our writing before they get published we believe in open and honest reviews.
How good is Blesta?
In terms of a billing software, Very good! It can look a little bit Windows 98-esqe but this software is simply robust, Well thought out and executed to perfection. Looking amongst the related communities is a easy way to assess the user happiness of each software and Blesta seems like it’s pleasing it’s audience. I watched over my month as the developers and owner interacted in a public setting with back and forth discussion of the future, The code and plenty of humour! There were 3rd party developers promoting their products and actively helping other users. It’s more of a community than any paid software I’ve ever seen and a credit to the people involved.
As previously mentioned the way in which you have the ability to customise every aspect is just too powerful to ignore, In an age where we’re subject to talks of source code and privacy – Blesta makes the right moves in terms of allowing users to see what’s under the hood (I think other software providers using encrypted or obfuscated code to allow their users to then store sensitive information are sleepwalking into a GDPR nightmare with the potential to ruin them and their customers.
What could be improved?
It’s not unfair to suggest it needs modernising, Something that came up a few times in the community conversations I observed. It looks old, Although I did manage to make mine look good with a few tweaks and customisations and there are 3rd party themes you can choose to purchase. Most clients expressed wants and needs that fell into a few categories Looks, Plugins, Modules which were all discussed publicly and I feel they do take these things into consideration when planning having seen the roadmap for the next few releases.
Alternatives and how they compare:
WHMCS – Arguably the market leader, I have used these previously so I’m aware of the good bad and ugly. Each release seems to get progressively worse and build the discontent from annoyed users. They added products that their paying users could sell on a commission basis which seemed morally wrong to me at the time, Which was around the time when I stopped using them as a hosting provider for my company and no longer had a need to use it. For me personally it’s been losing the edge for a long time, Coupled with client requests largely ignored (some for a decade) and the recent price hike of up to 4000-ish% I certainly feel I got out at a good time!
I re-visited the forum for the first time in years, It’s a baron wasteland of angry users, All the helpful users left and it’s just an endless cycle of bickering and some new users asking for help. Occasionally staff pop in and answer a random question but it doesn’t look great to me. I saw previous moderators seemingly trying to cause arguments with users for a difference in opinion and users shouting for help in the void. If I were to require a different billing system again WHMCS wouldn’t be in my list of choices.
Hostbill – I’ll be honest there wasn’t a chance I was paying for a license to write this review. It seems to be the most contained and fully equipped software but alas £600 – £6000 to write a comparison section wasn’t going to happen. I will maybe one day do a full review depending on whether or not we can get a development license.
ClientExec – To me personally this software feels like it remembered when WHMCS was good and attempted to relive the glory days. It’s actually really cool but still very young and I do have high hopes. I will try to do a full review of this as a separate entity next month.
The (potential) wild card………… Leap – Back when I was an eager young hosting provider Kian was always on the forum helping others and from the looks of his new project WHMCS wore him down to a point where he has almost retired. His proposal with Leap sounds like it could work and I will certainly be a beta tester when it’s available to us mere mortals. I would encourage hosts and hobbyists alike to watch this space!
Conclusion:
For me, I can see why Blesta keeps growing. For years it was always overlooked and rightfully so! The development cycles were slow and important features were missing. It’s a totally different story today however as they’re doing release after release with new and cool features. No other software is likely to open their source code to the public. If I were to pick a software today, Hands down it would be Blesta every time. This could all change depending upon Leap however and I foresee a battle of the two open code software’s brewing. Anyone already tied into other software has a remarkable undertaking to switch! If you’re new to the game then there’s only one open-source software around and you’d be foolish to choose anything else. To my cynical business mind, I think there will be many legal battles about companies storing sensitive client information in systems they have no idea how that information is processed. I simply couldn’t in good faith recommend software for a business with such restrictions.