AgileBill DA plugin released

[agileco]

Hello,

I just wanted to announce to the DA that our multi-industry billing automation application now has a plugin for DA.

The plugin currently supports the initial creation, suspension, unsuspension, and deletion based on the associated billing or admin actions in AgileBill. If there is a way to update the package via the API, we will add that functionality as well, possibily it is there but I overlooked it when reading the DA API docs, if so, someone feel free to point me in the correct direction.

Setup is simple, create the server definition in AgileBill with your server details, then setup plans referencing that server and the appropriate package in DA.

Here are some links to find out more about our application:

www.agileco.com
www.agilebill.com

You can grab our free trial and give it a test on your server, it is fully functional!

Thank you!

[sander815]

nice

do you have a demo server somewhere?

[agileco]

Yes, it is at http://agileco.com/demo/ but it has not been upgraded to include the DA plugin yet and you would not want to plugin your server details anyway since it is a public demo.

My recommendation is to download the trial if you want to try it out. It is a very simple installation, see:

http://www.agilebill.com/InstallDoc

[matrixx]

Looks nice and simple to use :)

Unless I missed them... Do you plan to integrate other payment processors like Worldpay Futurepay etc.. ?

Rob

[agileco]

Originally posted by matrixx
Looks nice and simple to use :)

Unless I missed them... Do you plan to integrate other payment processors like Worldpay Futurepay etc.. ?

Rob

Rob,

The first thing we did was integrate with 35 or so payment processors, you bet WorldPay Futurepay is on the list:

http://www.agilebill.com/checkoutplugin

Also, while you are at it, this may be of interest:

http://www.agilebill.com/CompareWebHost

And an important note on the price you see posted there: We are creating some special bundled prices, this means you will be able to get AgileBill and our Web Host module (includes the DA plugin) for a limited time at a reduced price of $200 USD.

[matrixx]

cool - thought I'd missed something ;)

Thanks - I'll certainly be looking at it a bit more closely

Rob

[rldev]

Can AgileBill deal with bandwidth overages?

Can AgileBill properly deal with the Add Domain feature in DA?

If so I would be interested.

Looks like Plesk :)

You need to fix the left column in the admin, it is not wide enough. No reason for a horizontal scroll bar(FireFox Browser). I do like what I see so far, seems very easy on the eyes and easy enough to use.

Any end user demos?

[Bloory]

Can Agilebill charge some customers in £ and some in $?

[agileco]

Originally posted by Bloory
Can Agilebill charge some customers in £ and some in $?


Yes it can do that, and it will convert the currency as well to the customers choice, see:
http://www.agilebill.com/Currency

[agileco]

Originally posted by rldev
Can AgileBill deal with bandwidth overages?

Can AgileBill properly deal with the Add Domain feature in DA?

If so I would be interested.

Looks like Plesk :)

You need to fix the left column in the admin, it is not wide enough. No reason for a horizontal scroll bar(FireFox Browser). I do like what I see so far, seems very easy on the eyes and easy enough to use.

Any end user demos?

Yes, we discovered we are using the same DHTML menu script as Plesk... I rather like it though. I hate to admit it but the admin area actually looks better in IE than Firefox. That does not stop me from using Firefox though! ;)

As to the overage charges, yes, we have an optional Charge module that allows you to input incremental charges that will be rolled into an invoice when the clients service is rebilled, or on a set interval such as daily, weekly, monthly, etc.

We have not taken the next step yet, which would be to create scripts for DA or the other CPs that gets the overage amounts and creates the charge record in AB, so for now that must be done by hand.

However, the charge module has a simple API so all you would need would be a script that determines the clients service ID from AB and as well as the overage charges as they occur and they could be sent to our charge API.

http://www.agilebill.com/Charge

[rldev]

Please let us know when there is automatic provisioning for bandwidth overages as it is very important to many.

[agileco]

Originally posted by rldev
Please let us know when there is automatic provisioning for bandwidth overages as it is very important to many.

Ok, do you mean billing or provisioning?

[rldev]

billing :)

[agileco]

Very well! Duely noted...

[sander815]

do you have multiple languages?
like german, dutch, french etc

[agileco]

Yes, quite a few translations already exist and you can make your own if they don't it is simply a matter of going through the XML language files... see a list of available language packs here:

http://agileco.com/?_static=1&name=agilebill_features#multilingual

[FreeBSDGuy]

Can AgileBill be used by our resellers too?

Example:

I install AgileBill on our server and use it to sell/setup resellers, can those resellers then use it to sell/setup their customers?

Or is there a discount if we add it for all of our resellers?

[agileco]

We have plans for a reseller module that will allow the resellers to create and manage their accounts in AB...

In the meanwhile, contact me via agileco and we can discuss a site license so your resellers can each have their own AB installation.

[rldev]

Can the module upgrade and downgrade hosting plans?

[hostpc.com]

Does your program have any conversion scripts from other billing programs?

I'm looking for a replacement for whoiscart - but the thought of re-keying 3000 accounts manually doesnt really appeal to me :)

[rldev]

Why not wait for SilverStar first?

[nobaloney]

Originally posted by agileco
In the meanwhile, contact me via agileco and we can discuss a site license so your resellers can each have their own AB installation.
I've sent you a private message and have not yet gotten a reply.

Jeff

[agileco]

Originally posted by rldev
Can the module upgrade and downgrade hosting plans?

Not at this time, as I stated in my first post this was not implemented as we could not find documentation on a way to accomplish this via the API. If this is added to the API or we simply overlooked it, we will most certianly add that feature into our DA plugin for AgileBill.

[agileco]

Originally posted by hostpc.com
Does your program have any conversion scripts from other billing programs?

I'm looking for a replacement for whoiscart - but the thought of re-keying 3000 accounts manually doesnt really appeal to me :)

No, but we do have plans to build import wizards for other popular billing programs. If you are seriously interested, please contact me via e-mail, sales at agileco.com.

[hostpc.com]

Expect it shortly :)

[rldev]

How about the ability for clients to upgrade and downgrade their accounts?

[agileco]

Originally posted by rldev
How about the ability for clients to upgrade and downgrade their accounts?

No, this was not implemented as we could not find documentation on a way to accomplish this via the DA API, so there is no way to create that functionality on our DA plugin...

[interfasys]

Any plan to let user manage their Enom account from AB (like Modernbill)?

[agileco]

Originally posted by interfasys
Any plan to let user manage their Enom account from AB (like Modernbill)?

Yes, we will be adding this functionality at some point, but some of the other features are much higher on our list right now.

[interfasys]

Thanks. It's a nice app that you have here. A good competition for Modernbill 5.

[rldev]

I suggest you get to work on your DA support. MBill will have all of the following very shortly as well as automated bandwidth and disk space overage billing:

Will Support, the following plan creation features, ability to upgrade/downgrade, and properly implemented Add On Domains and account syncing.

Sub-Domains
Email Accounts
Email Forwarders
Mailing Lists
AutoResponders
MySQL Databases
Domain Pointers
Ftp Accounts

Anonymous Ftp Accounts
CGI Access
PHP Access
SpamAssassin
SSL Access
SSH Access
DNS Control
Suspend At Limit
Skin

Everything is currently available in the DA API to do this now. I really like your product, but it just does not do enough to currently justify the cost. Perhaps that will change in a month. Keep up the good work.

[Auraka]

Will agile allow you to provision accounts to different control panels depending on which package they choose?

[agileco]

Yes, you can setup unlimited servers, and associate each product/plan to a specific server.

[WholesaleDialup]

OK, after buying and banging my head against the wall with another un-named extremely complex and well, flat out confusing billing package which also has DA integration....

We decided to look elswhere and try to sell or get a refund for our owned license of the previously mentioned product.

After reading and looking quite a bit I decided to download AgileBill and install it.

I installed the trial late last night, it was pretty darn easy..

I spent a few hours today tinkering with the admin/config side of things and I am extremely impressed.

I think they totally blow the other billing apps out of the water from what I have seen so far.

They have some issues but I am mostly impressed..

I was going to purchase the $199 package tonight and wait a bit on some of the other Add-ons.

Have any of your here puchased and installed it? Do you have any comments good or bad?

Please don't reply to the post because I don't want to poo all over the Agile folks, please email me directly at todd@lightwavetech.com

Of course if the comments are good, feel free to post them, if they are bad please email me directly :)

[nobaloney]

Originally posted by WholesaleDialup
Of course if the comments are good, feel free to post them, if they are bad please email me directly :)
Isn't that pretty self-serving? Sure you'll get your answers, but none of the rest of us will.

I strongly suggest a healthy dialogue based on both good and bad experiences; this would be helpful to all of us.

I've removed your similar post. While it's not quite a duplicate, it's asking for the same response in the same forum.

Jeff

[rldev]

The basic problem with AgileBill in terms of DA integration is that it is far too limited at the moment. No ability to track and bill for bandwth overages automatically. No ability to upgrade and downgrade accounts. No ability to properly "Add a Domain" to an existing account. No ability to to sync accounts between the two softwares. These are imperative items in a billing software IMHO.

[vizability]

Is there any billing software that works that closely with DA?
I'm looking at several packages (Modern, Clientexec, etc) and the details on the integration are quite vague...

[rldev]

Modernbill's next update to the DA module should have very tight integration.

[WholesaleDialup]

Originally posted by jlasman
Isn't that pretty self-serving? Sure you'll get your answers, but none of the rest of us will.

I strongly suggest a healthy dialogue based on both good and bad experiences; this would be helpful to all of us.

I've removed your similar post. While it's not quite a duplicate, it's asking for the same response in the same forum.

Jeff


It was not meant as "Self Serving" or selfish, in fact my thoughts were quite the opposite. I did not want to encourage folks to bash the mans product within his own post. That's all, I think you read a little too much into my post.

All in all I decided not to use AgileBill after purchasing it. I am not sure this is a reflection of any lack of anything in the product, just an overall dissapointment with the 4 packages we evaluated over the last two weeks. We decided to go back to the drawing board and continue development on our own app. For us, it seems the only way to trust what we are using. We have found that the overall quality of product, documentation and support are way less than we can live with with all the apps we evaluated. I think this is just an indication that the hosting community seem to accept far less in the way of quality in return for a few whiz bang feaures like plugins for CP's and Gateways.

So, I am sorry to say that after buying 4 applications (2 purchased and 2 lease) we decided to go back to our own development as the solution.

Biggest issue for us was that it seems that folks sit down and write these apps, make them pretty tough to understand then expect folks to figure out what they were thinking when they wrote it without so much as a step by step to billing your first customer.

I will still say that of the applications we played with, AgileBill was probably our favorite.

[resolveit]

Just my 2c worth....

Well owning licenses for whoiscart, modernbill and agilebill I can state that the comparitive overview on the agilebill site is misleading (or at the very best out-of-date) where other billing systems are concerned.

I have been using ModernBill for my billing because it was and still is the most complete billing solution that supports DirectAdmin. AgileBill on the other hand is great as a general purpose billing system that also supports hosting customers (yes I mean that the hosting addon is just that an addon).

1. Whoiscart was built for ordering domain names and it's great for doing that, lately they've added an option for hosting.
2. AgileBill is a general purpose billing systen and was not originally designed as a billing solution for hosting companies, they've lately added a hosting add-on to allow billing for hosting companies but it's not complete. You guys need to work on this to take on ModernBill.
3. ModernBill was designed with the hosting company in mind. It integrates with several registrars and control panels, it integrates with 3rd party Affiliate programs. Don't try to use ModernBill for general billing as I can tell you it's not suited for that.

Overall conclusion is that each billing system has it's strong and weakpoints. If you only worry about hosting then get ModernBill, if you only do domain names WhoisCart is for you. If you want an allround billing system get AgileBill.

None of the billing systems allow for resellers at the moment although AgileBill have announced that they are looking into this. This is also a feature request for ModernBill.

At the end of the day decide what your business requirements are and based on yoru business requirements choose your billing system.

Regards,
Onno Vrijburg