Ruediger DalchowIf you’re in the reseller hosting business, or do any form of web management, then the chances are WHMCS is a familiar name to you.
For many it is the first hosting platform that they are introduced to, and they never look any further. It can’t be denied though, despite it’s popularity, WHMCS certainly has it’s pitfalls and flaws.
Why you should consider a WHMCS alternative
When you work – or play – in a space such as the web, it is always worth keeping an eye on new developments and ensuring that your tools are fit for purpose.
Developments happen at such a pace it is easy to lose track and not realise when you’re paying over the odds or missing out on key features.
Some of the most issues that people run in to with WHMCS are:
The Pricing
Unlike some other options in the market, WHMCS has always had a license fee for users to pay. S
ince WebPros (who also own cPanel and Plesk) purchased WHMCS, the pricing has increased, and lifetime licenses are not supported anymore.
Discounts for bigger web hosting providers have also been scrapped. This ultimately means either less profit for resellers, or higher prices for the end user.
Restrictions
WHMCS requires configuration for every single server, and having more than one server under the same configuration is not possible. This means, that unlimited reseller hosting cannot be achieved
If you run a serious web hosting business, it is more than likely that your customers will not have their website spread over more than one server. This leads to additional effort and cost for you.
Ease of use
Despite it’s popularity in the web community, WHMCS can actually be quite difficult to use. To their credit they do publish plenty of helpful documentation, but even then it can be confusing, time consuming, and inefficient – all things you want to avoid when running a business and trying to juggle multiple tasks at once.
Industry leader – but…
WHMCS prides itself with being the industry leader for web hosting automation. But so was Nokia for mobile phones, and we all know what happened.
With cPanel and Plesk owned by the same parent company, WHMCS is tightening the grip on the industry and maximise profits. There are other and better options out there.
So, what WHMCS alternatives are there?
There are a few alternatives to WHMCS, free and premium, each with their own benefits.
If you’re struggling with any of the WHMCS issues above, then we would highly recommend HostShop by 20i as a great alternative.
HostShop is our bespoke web hosting billing and automation platform, which is 100% free with 20i reseller hosting – no license fees, no up front costs, and no limits.
HostShop also pairs perfectly with StackCP client area, and our (more powerful) cPanel alternative My20i,
Some of the other top features of HostShop include:
- Clean, mobile friendly, easy to use design
- Includes ready-made, stylish hosting website templates
- Free fraud checking and no transaction charges
- Automatic import of customers from WHMCS
- No installs or updates required
- Guideline pricing to sell over 300 discounted domain extensions
- Single click registry level premium domains
- Free technical support from our award-winning customer service team
- Feedback area, where you can genuinely shape the future of HostShop
We’ve also made it super easy to import your customers from WHMCS to HostShop, which you can see in our quick video guide
Still not sure? We understand that moving can be a scary thought, so we also offer WHMCS license discounts as part of our reseller perks.
For more information about the features available, visit our HostShop page where you can also chat with our helpful sales team, or even book a demo call to see HostShop in action.
Have you happy with WHMCS or are you moving elsewhere in 2024? Let us know in the comments.
Customers also asked:
What are some other WHMCS alternatives? Alongside HostShop, some of the most popular alternatives include Box Billing, Blesta, HostBill, ClientExec and WiseCP, all of which have varying costs.
Richard Chambers
Mark Langshaw
The absence of WISECP in the list is a big shortcoming. The guys officially revolutionized. It is similar to whmcs but simpler and more advanced than that. I recommend adding it to your list.
I’m in a bit of a conundrum when it comes to using HostShop or WHMCS. HostShop does a lot of what I need it to, but the affiliate side lets it down. Only paying out into the affiliates balance then having to manually pay out affiliates and reduce their balance accordingly is a costly process. Even if there was an easy way to integrate ClickBank, Awin or something similar into HostShop it’d make life a lot simpler. It could be done easily by allowing code to be added to specific pages with tags/variables for price, customer ID, transaction ID etc. I don’t really want to use WHMCS but my business is going to use affiliates to help it grow and I don’t have the time to manually sort out paying affiliates.
HostShop is also a little slow and feels a bit clunky. There’s not much in the way of flexibility, digital journey is set out by 20i and I have no control over it where I’d like to be able to control a bit more, which WHMCS would give me the flexibility to do. It’s really difficult to decide on what to use at this point, I do think that I’ll end up getting a licence for WHMCS even if it’s for a short time until HostShop becomes even better than it already is.
That said, I do really like HostShop I’ve seen recently some updates to HostShop and they’re really good. It would be awesome if 20i had a timeline of planned updates and included their Resellers in some sort of focus group.
Awesome services from 20i overall and can’t wait to see what upgrades come next.
Hi Dan – thanks for the feedback, we really appreciate it. In regards to the affiliate system, we have plans to change that in the near future. We’re also planning on many more changes which should address most of your other issues too – watch this space 🙂
What is considered the near future?
Hi Ron,
Can you clarify what you’re asking here, is it specific to WHMCS?
Thanks,
Matt
I would have preferred to use HostShop, but have not found it as easy to configure as WHMCS. The designs I’ve felt, have been limited, and in some cases dated.
I would love to see some real working examples of HostShop, to persuade me otherwise. It makes more sense. That said, it is nice to have the option of selling custom products too, with a good marketplace to integrate 3rd party modules.
Thanks Bret. If you have any issues setting up HostShop our support team is always there to help you. We are always working on improving the design and functionality to make it easier for you to use HostShop and save money you would have to spend on a WHMCS license. I like the idea of including real examples in the documentation and will put this forward to the development team.