Current status

Would people please share what products they have migrated to. We are a FreeBSD shop we are looking for a Unix solution first, Mac OS/X second.

The best we have found so far is Solid State, http://www.solid-state.org/. I am not particularly looking for an open source solution but after the optigold experience, we want the product to support MySQL and to run on Unix or OS/X.

If you wish reply to doug <at>safeport<dot>com. I will summerize replies if there is interest.

 

We have found the following php/mysql based systems. The list is in the order we intend to evalutate them. If anyone has experience to share it is muchly appreciated. the list:

1) phpCOIN - currently free; will remain so for another year.
2) AWBS - looks very good - no source; mature company
3) LogicBill - open source project
4) WHMCS - no source requires ioncube loader

-----------------others (in no particular order)-------------------
5) ModernBill
6) WHMCS
7) BillingOrchard
8) MiniBill

http://www.whmcs.com lists several other products have import scripts for. Ofthese we looked at lpanel.

 

Since it is pretty clear that OptiGold is long dead, I think this discussion is long overdue.

The one we're looking at the most seriously is:

http://services.tucows.com/services/billing/

Yes, the old school Platypus, now owned by TUCOWS, and it is a product being actively developed. All of the data is in MS-SQL, and it has a PHP front-end for customer and some admin functions. They've added various control panel support recently, and it supports OpenSRS domain renewals, etc.

--Mike

 

WHMCS is the dogs bolox! Try it out.

 

WHMCS is one I prefer.

ClientEXEC is hell slow, and ModernBill is just awful, its scary to me...

 

Clientexec shouldnt be running slow!

Email the support and ask them to check everything!

 

WHMCS looks promising, however, it doesn't seem to support basic dialup users out of the box. The price seems very reasonable.

Anyone interesting in getting together either on a work-around or ganging up on WHMCS to add that feature into it. If enough users request it, they may add it.

 

I have to agree with Mike. We migrated to Platypus this year. Painless. Used the opportunity to perform a full audit and manually move customers from Optigold. Found lots of problems that we weren't aware of in Optigold. Mostly customers that just stopped receiving bills or CC accounts that stopped processing. Nothing showing up as late, no late notices, nothing on the late reports and no reason they weren't being billed. Talk about frustrating.

Platypus works. It hasn't once done anything that wasn't MY fault. No duplicate billings, no "forgetting" to bill a customer.

We're using it on a Win 2003 server platform with MSSql 2000. Works great. Database is open. Can drop into the DB any time I want to do something custom. Never had any luck working with Filemaker. Never could link into it without some kind of error popping up.

Customer support from Tucows has been excellent. It is a subscription model, pay per month. Always have the latest update, never had a problem updating to the new version. We call or email them anytime we have questions and there were lots of them when we first started. I don't hesitate to contact them when I just can't figure something out. I don't beat my head against the wall anymore because of my billing system.

Some of you may balk at the monthly "software as a service" model, and I did as well at first. However, there are a couple of areas that it works really well and this is one of them. Control panels are another.

Looked at some of the others. Some had lots of "fluff" and "pretty". I wanted functional. Didn't want to have to coax my billing system to life all the time.

To sum it up, so far so good. We're still learning all of what this thing can do but most of our billing is up and running transparently. Not something I could say with Optigold, and I *REALLY* liked Optigold.

Want to also take this opportunity to thank Mike and his gang at SparkLogic. We purchased the OptiSkin stuff and it really made life better with Optigold. Great product, very reasonable prices. Plus, if you look, there were a lot of times that Mike was answering Opti questions for people when it wasn't his job to do so. Thanks again Mike!


Mark E Walker
President, Datavoice Technologies Inc.
Formerly Lunar Gravity Networks.

 

The only problem I have found with Platy is it is very cumbersome and overly laden with a bit too many options.. At times it can be very confusing.. It really takes some getting used to.. I always liked the simple interface with OG...

You are right, Optiskin was great..

 

I have to chime in here as well and say:

Thank you to Mike at Sparklogic

for all the help that he provided when we bought OptiSkin. He was a good and devoted supporter to the Optigold effort. Perhaps he should start writing products for Platypus now as it seems to be the choice of the day.

 

I wonder if Mike can re-write our sign up scripts? It is so outdated and has always been ass backwards.. I'd like something similar to Modern Bill as far as the signup pages...

 

Modern Bill is exploitable. Stay away.

 

Not only that, some other interesting problems..

You cannot print invoices.. And you cannot queue up invoices to be automatically printed and sent out.

Some people still need paper..

I have found this to be a major problem with all the PHP based billing systems...

 

Yes, we found this same issue as well, which is why Platypus seems to be the "closest" to the functionality that OptiGold provided without being a "dead end" platform like Opti has become. It really is a shame that Shawn has not officially EOL'ed the product.

--Mike

 

Yea, I've done some custom signup scripts for others in the past that made the order of things a bit more sane. Anyone with some basic ASP or PHP coding experience should be able to tackle it. That said, I would likely invest my energies into looking into a new billing platform instead.

--Mike

 

Thanks for the response.. Yeah, we have staff with PHP and ASP experience, but it looks pretty complicated for someone that is not familiar with it. What I mean is time consuming figuring out what variables are what...

We looked into other billing systems, but none of the PHP based ones offer paper invoice printing... That is a MAJOR problem.

 

Hey Mike, do you have any examples of these other custom scripts you have done? I am more than willing to pay you for them...

The sign up process now is:

1. Enter login/pass
2. Enter name/address/tel and billing info/CC
3. Choose product

There is NO logic in that...

If we could at least have the product choice be first or second and the customer billing info last, I think that would solve a world of issues...

If you already have some custom scripts that you have made, instead of re-inventing the wheel, I would love to be able to get a hold of them to customize them for our own use. Thank you!