Switching billing/control panels - what actually stops you?

WHMDC

We have seen this come up a lot recently.

People aren’t always happy with their current setup (pricing, legacy systems, limitations etc), and you see demos, try things out, have a play around…

…but still end up staying where you are.

What actually makes you stay?

Is it the risk around billing?
Time/effort to migrate?
Missing integrations?
Or just not worth touching something that already works?

Interested to hear from people running real setups.

localhost

Trust me bro code

somik

@localhost said:
Trust me bro code

Vibe coded by someone without any programming knowledge... like Tony Stark

AnthonySmith

Many moons ago, I wanted to switch from whmcs to hostbill, I was happy to pay more, I was happy to pay for migration assistance.

The issue was that I had been running around 8 years already at that point and when hostbill took a look at my schema they were unsure if they could do it.

The suggestion was to run in parallel but that's obviously a nightmare.

So if you're targeting existing whmcs customers you really need to make sure your migration process can check EVERYTHING for smaller businesses, they can't take the risk of days of disruption or incompatibles being found AFTER migration.

somik

@AnthonySmith said:
Many moons ago, I wanted to switch from whmcs to hostbill, I was happy to pay more, I was happy to pay for migration assistance.

The issue was that I had been running around 8 years already at that point and when hostbill took a look at my schema they were unsure if they could do it.

The suggestion was to run in parallel but that's obviously a nightmare.

So if you're targeting existing whmcs customers you really need to make sure your migration process can check EVERYTHING for smaller businesses, they can't take the risk of days of disruption or incompatibles being found AFTER migration.

Wont exporting the DB and validating the schema against what is expected for migration (and checking for any tables/columns extra) already tell you that it isn't ready for automated migration?

WHMDC

Our migration tool compares your incoming schema with the DeskCloud schema and allows you to manually select what data goes into the relevant tables. It does a good job of automatically detecting but only you will know what goes where/or where you want data. Plus migrations are always a good chance to do housekeeping within the database.

AnthonySmith

@somik said:

@AnthonySmith said:
Many moons ago, I wanted to switch from whmcs to hostbill, I was happy to pay more, I was happy to pay for migration assistance.

The issue was that I had been running around 8 years already at that point and when hostbill took a look at my schema they were unsure if they could do it.

The suggestion was to run in parallel but that's obviously a nightmare.

So if you're targeting existing whmcs customers you really need to make sure your migration process can check EVERYTHING for smaller businesses, they can't take the risk of days of disruption or incompatibles being found AFTER migration.

Wont exporting the DB and validating the schema against what is expected for migration (and checking for any tables/columns extra) already tell you that it isn't ready for automated migration?

And there is the specific issue that all panel developers fall into... "What is expected for migration" expectations on the source haha. When you are literally 100+ versions and upgrades in... Nothing can be truly expected.

WHMCS for example have so many fallbacks for legacy compatibility it's crazy.

But idk, if someone says hey use this, it's not VC owned, or scalping you yearly, or leaving feature requests unacknowledged for 9 years despite them being the most popular requests from all customers, and it's cheaper.... Why are people not migrating? Can't be reputation when it comes to WHMCS.. I imagine?

Anyway I am.im.my phone and thumb typing, it's a fun subject to get into but basically what I am getting at is all these panels start as the answer to X and then don't focus on the ability for people to move from X to Y enough, then wonder why people stick with X.

VirtFusion is a great example they hold your hand through everything and make damn sure it's going to work with minimal disruption so you can move over from Virtualizor or solsvm etc.

bingobangobongo

"what actually stops you?"

They're all shit and ultimately in some way worse than what we have... all in their own areas of course... Plus, there's a big time investment in getting current panel to where you need it, i.e., customizations, direct writes to DB from other tools etc - so unless new panel solves all of that (none of them, including yours do), then whats the point?

WHMDC

@bingobangobongo said:
"what actually stops you?"

They're all shit and ultimately in some way worse than what we have... all in their own areas of course... Plus, there's a big time investment in getting current panel to where you need it, i.e., customizations, direct writes to DB from other tools etc - so unless new panel solves all of that (none of them, including yours do), then whats the point?

Would you be willing to go deeper into an explanation as to what you would require your next billing software to solve from day one? There are many points we feel that could come into play here with "what actually stops you" but we feel DeskCloud is different and will save you money in the long run, and also offers more out of the box (and growing).