After months of development, I’m pleased to announce that SPBAS v3 has arrived!
SPBAS v3 offers 11 new features, 33 improvements and 94 bug fixes! Here’s the change log & upgrade instructions.
This milestone release features support for web hosting and domains. We’ve also added Buy Now buttons that work with Paypal and 2Checkout. Many of the helpdesk improvements that you guys requested are now available. We’ve added a feature called “Auto-Pay” that compliments our support for processor side subscriptions (e.g. Paypal Subscriptions). And we’ve made improvements to work flow when configuring SPBAS.
SPBAS v3 offers all of this and much more. Keep reading for the highlights.
Building Something Better
Lack of choice. Lack of competition. Lack of something free (that’s any good).
All three could describe the current state of billing solutions for web hosts. We aim to change that with SPBAS v3.
SPBAS offers unique features such as multiple storefronts. A storefront consists of an order system, customer area, helpdesk and knowledge base. Each storefront can be fully branded and can run on the same server as the admin area or on a remote server. SPBAS enables you to run all of your businesses with a single software license.
With SPBAS you never pay for new features. As long as your support & download package is current you will have access to all features that we develop. With our competition, you purchase a license and then are required to pay extra for things that should already be included as core features! Not so with SPBAS, we save you time through automation and money thanks to things like all inclusive features and multiple storefronts.
We want everyone to use SPBAS. That’s why we offer our fully featured free version that is good for up to 25 customers. After you reach that milestone you can upgrade to the next level; all the way up to SPBAS Max which has no customer limit and comes with 99% source code access. SPBAS scales with your business as it grows.
Web Hosting & Domains
The web hosting support that SPBAS v3 offers is complete, easy to use and feature rich. It’s modular design will enable us to support many different provisioning modules. With this release we are introducing the WHM provisioning module; it supports both standard account creation and the reseller features that WHM offers.
With hosting, you also need domain name support – something else we now have with the release of SPBAS v3. Again, an entirely modular system which makes it possible to support many different domain registrars. With this release we are introducing the eNom provisioning module which has support for the registration, transfer and renewal of domains names.
We’ve got an extensive introduction to our hosting and domains features in a dedicated blog post – but our first v3 release includes everything you’d expect: shared and reseller hosting support; register, transfer & renew domains; and the ability to offer free (or discounted) domains with hosting packages – and even vary the discounts or free domains on a per-package and per-tld basis!
Buy Now Buttons
To use this great new feature you simply log into your SPBAS, navigate to the product price tier view and click the buy now button link. This will generate a snippet of javascript that can be embedded into any web page to show the buy now button. Clicking the button takes you directly to the pay gateway to make payment.
Here’s an example button that you can use to order our upgrade service:
The buttons can be styled using standard HTML and CSS.
Here’s the CSS for the button above:
#buy_now input.submit {
background: #666;
border: 1px solid #666;
color: #fff;
font: bold 14px Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-Serif;
letter-spacing: 1px;
padding: 12px;
-webkit-border-radius: 6px;
-moz-border-radius: 6px;
-khtml-border-radius: 6px;
border-radius: 6px;
}
#buy_now input.submit:hover {
color: #aef650;
}
And here’s the HTML:
<div id='buy_now'>
<!-- Paste this where you want the button to appear. -->
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="http://www.spbas.com/orders/buy_now.php?product=ad93985a"></script>
</div>
Code Hooks, API and 3rd Party Modules
Two new code hooks were added, “_after_domain_package_creation” which is triggered just after a domain is added and “_license_validation_before_new_instance_added” which is triggered during license validation just before a new instance is added.
We’ve also added a new “generic create order” REST API call that you can program against.
New 3rd party integration’s include HostBill, Premium Web Cart, JV Zoo and WSO Pro. This enables you to add customers, users and licenses to SPBAS for each new order processed by the 3rd party application.
Other Improvements
The biggest improvements were made in the helpdesk, here are just a few:
- rewrote the IMAP importer to be more complete in parsing incoming mail
- tickets started in the customer area are now instantly imported
- tickets can be previewed by hovering over the subject line in admin
- marking a ticket as spam now also spams any other tickets submitted by the user
- tickets can now be closed by the user from the customer area
- new ticket creation and replies in the customer area are now redirected to prevent duplicates
- added a support ticket view in the admin customer summary
- added better e-mail flood detection and prevention
Continuing with improvements, we’ve added better support for Paypal subscription based billing. As always, you can choose to use Paypal subscriptions in parallel with SPBAS invoicing or just let SPBAS handle the invoicing. If you choose to take advantage of Paypal subscriptions then take note, we’ve added a new featured called “Auto-Pay”. The Auto-Pay feature prevents the invoice from being paid if the subscription is active. Instead, it shows a note that the invoice is pending payment. If the subscription is cancelled then Auto-Pay is deactivated so that the customer can pay the invoice, which starts a new subscription at Paypal and re-enables Auto-Pay.
We’ve also made changes to work flow when adding a new product and throughout the web hosting & domain modules. Using the SPBAS Products feature for example, when you add a new product you are now automatically forwarded to the next step of the process which is adding the price tier. After you add the price tier you are forwarded over to assign the product to an order form which completes the configuration. We will extend this support into all areas of SPBAS with upcoming releases. Features like this make the configuration of SPBAS really easy.
Check out our change log for the complete list of improvements.
In Closing…
SPBAS has grown quickly over the last three years and now we have finally reached our v3 milestone. None of this would have been possible without your continued support and helpful feedback all along the way. Rest assured that we plan to continue listening to your feedback and bettering SPBAS into the v3 series of releases.
As always, thanks for everything guys! Let me know what you think in the comments.
I think that you should make a roadmap.
I purchased WHMCS 2 weeks ago because of hosting features and reports.
Also, SPBAS still lacks report features and the customers limits makes other solutions stands.
They’ve got a 30 day money back guarantee
We haven’t published a roadmap in the past due to competitive reasons. I can see your point here though, let me think on this one for a bit.
Start a support ticket on the reports and I’ll work with you to get it in place. I agree that it’s time we have better reporting. The dashboard widgets are great, but in-depth reporting would be much better for some things.
Congrats Andy for the new version.
It is the best version ever released and the hosting solution is perfect !
Since 2009 we rely on it every day and it so nice to have software taking care of everything: invoicing, licensing and orders.
I am so happy to know that SPBAS is behind me and remembers everything: when to send an invoice or when to suspend a license.
As a mature product, SPBAS is over any other product. In fact, if you know and use it, you will believe me when I tell you that there is no competition for SPBAS. It is simply the best.
I really cannot imagine my business without SPBAS and over the years Andy proved to be more than a “customer care guy” but a real friend: all the time ready to help.
I would buy it anytime once more!
Good luck Andy and once again thank you for your hard work.
Thanks so much for your kind feedback Dan! I really appreciate your continued support.
I see a ton of work has been put into ‘Hosting Plans and Domains’ support for this v3 release. I’m sure there is a big audience out there that is begging for something different that what they currently have.
SPBAS will be a nice new alternative for them
Myself and many others just like me, sell a product, not hosting or domains. I’m wondering if this focus shift is going to cause any issues for the customers who use SPBAS to license and deliver a Program. The main function of SPBAS up into this point (for me) is to sell a product, capture funds, deliver a product. Then renew plans as they age.
I have worries about the original functions of SPBAS getting left behind, while you guys focus on making SPBAS compatible with registrars and hosting environments. (Which I know is a TON of work).
Make me feel better about this Andy!! =]
Hi Brian
Thanks for your post and thoughts! I can appreciate your request for some re-assurances.
I guess first and foremost, as illustrated by some of the previous comments here, we’ve had quite a few requests for hosting and domains from our existing customer base. Indeed, one of the very reasons we started from scratch with SPBAS many years ago (leading to the first release in July 2009) was our desire to expand our offerings to include hosting and domains support. The most important thing here to note is we’ve spent 2.5 years building out our licensing features – and all the other parts of SPBAS – first! We wanted to wait until the core features of SPBAS – which benefit everyone, regardless of what they use SPBAS to sell – were in the right place.
Secondly, and related to that, architecturally we haven’t had to hack, shoe-horn, cut or otherwise mangle SPBAS to build out our hosting and domains features. The hosting and domains features build on the tried-and-tested systems in SPBAS (such as products, packages, assets etc.). This means that every improvement we build into the core of SPBAS is available for those who use SPBAS for hosting, domains, licensing, or anything else (and we have a lot of people using SPBAS for different things!). And we have a lot of these improvements planned (building on the buy now buttons, auto-pay, helpdesk improvements and everything else non-hosting that was part of v3).
Thirdly, expanding into hosting and domains opens a much bigger market for us – and this means more customers and hopefully more income for us. We can use this to make the product better, improve support and development times. And as I noted above, our architecture means that every improvement we make to the customer area, the order form, the helpdesk, the knowledgebase, the products, billing, invoices and every other part of SPBAS – which are just as important to someone buying and selling hosting as they are to someone using SPBAS for licensing – will benefit you as well! Plus, we’ve got several great new licensing features in the pipeline as well.
Finally, many may not realise that for a long time many years ago, Andy and myself actually worked on hosting and domain management systems in the past – PHPAudit (one of our products before SPBAS) was actually originally born to license one of those hosting and domain systems! In many ways, we’ve now gone full circle, and so we fully appreciate the scale of the task ahead of us.
Hopefully this will help, and we look forward to you joining us on this exciting new journey, and benefiting from all the new features we’re going to be bringing to the customer area, the order form, the helpdesk, the knowledgebase, the products, price sheets, invoices, billing, payment, payment processors – and yes, hosting, domains and licensing too!
An important feature is missing: (avoid abuse of) trial licenses.
Jaime – great news then, free trial validation will be in v3.1. No ETA but it shouldn’t be too long