eSupport v3 & ModernBill v5

[GELucas]

Are this 2 softwares worth purchasing? How is there support? I heard ModernBill support sucks, but is this new version worth purchasing more than ClientExec or WHMAutoPilot. I want to provide the best and stablest for my customers.

Help is appriciated.

Thanks & Regards.

 

[ThinkSupport]

Personally I will vote for MB.

 

[Lesli]

Are this 2 softwares worth purchasing? How is there support? I heard ModernBill support sucks, but is this new version worth purchasing more than ClientExec or WHMAutoPilot. I want to provide the best and stablest for my customers.

Help is appriciated.

Thanks & Regards.

Caveat: I've purchased an MB license, but I've never used MB before. I did, however, attend their convention / release party in Louisville in March and was impressed by the potential of the program.

You're really the only one who can decide whether MB is better for you and your clients than any other billing software / server management package, including ClientExec or WHMAutoPilot. (I've never used eSupport, so can't give you any feedback there. Sorry.)

I'm going to be using MB5, but I'm waiting for a real, truly stable version. Part of the MB upheaval that's going on now is upset from customers who want a smooth changeover from MB4, and from customers who have been waiting about 18 months for v5 to be stable (and yet it still isn't stable, even though MB says it is). Lots of overlap between those two groups, too; and they run the gamut between pleased-but-impatient and severely disgruntled.

However, MB5 is not an upgrade. It was rebuilt from the ground up. The developers apparently did this to keep the product from becoming increasingly unwieldy as they added this and that improvement. This is good, because the product will be much more flexible, more extensible, and appeal to a wider customer base. This is bad, because no matter how many times you tell yourself that Good Quality Development Takes Time...you want to just change packages already, dangit.

MB Support

If you use support correctly, it's possible that the support is quite good. The few tickets I've submitted have been followed up quickly, though I should add that they've been over very simple issues so I don't know how good a test I've really given their support.

Downsides I've Seen

I haven't installed MB5 in a production environment yet, because it doesn't yet have all the stable functionality that I want. (I don't want to put my clients through all kinds of traumadrama: notices about this not working right, that not working at all, oh but please, go sign up again in this new billing system. Thanks much, no, I'll just wait until it's all ready.)

I'm also a bit uneasy about their new licensing schema. There's a new API functionality that lets anyone write add-ons for MB. However, I think that to run any third-party app you have to own not just an MB license, but an MB developer's license...and that pricing information isn't available yet. Since one of MB5's selling points has been that anyone can extend its functionality and customize it however they wish, the need for a separate special developer's license-for-an-undisclosed-amount-and-time makes my teeth itch just a little bit.

Looking at Other Packages

At one point, I did look into both WHMAutoPilot and ClientExec while gritting my teeth at MB5's slippage. However, for reasons I can't recall at the moment, neither of those two products really worked for me. They didn't represent a substantial increase in functionality and future growth over what I'm now / still using.

MB has recently added a v5 How Do I forum that may help you read about how to use some of the features (or the current state of some features). That might help make your decision a little more clear.

I'm really sorry I can't give you a nice, clean, easy answer. It's honest, though. (Wordy, but honest. [Sorry - freelancing as a tech writer / doc production. It's infecting my brain.])

 

[watchdoghosting]

We use Modernbill, and I've had nothing but EXCELLENT support from them. They always answer my questions fully and thoroughly every time. Also, their response time is phenomenal. As long as you submit a trouble ticket during their office hours, you will get a response back that day (unless you're cutting it close to the end of the day). If they get your trouble ticket the next day, they usually respond to those first.

As far as functionality goes, Modernbill v4 still is the better version to go with vs. v5. I've tried both versions out, and v4 just works a tad better than v5.

v5 looks VERY promising, and should have all the little bugs fixed in the next few months.

 

[sailor]

yeah we deployed 5 and then rolled back to 4 - the amount of labor to run 5 vs 4 is staggering and there are a lot of bugs still. 5 is not ready for produciton yet.

 

[WickedShark]

You may want to try WHMCS and see if it meets your needs. Many companies are using it now or are swtiching to it. The support is great and the feature list keeps growing with every update.