WHMDC: The New Self-Hosted Billing & Automation Platform Entering the Hosting Market
WHMDC is announcing a new self-hosted billing and automation platform built for hosting providers, developers, and service operators who want full control over their infrastructure without SaaS lock-in, per-client billing, or dependency-heavy stacks.
The goal is to provide a modern, lightweight alternative to incumbent hosting automation platforms such as WHMCS, while addressing long-standing industry concerns including performance, security, licensing models, dependency bloat, and framework complexity.
What WHMDC Is
WHMDC is a fully self-hosted billing and automation system written in pure PHP 8 + MySQL, with zero Composer or framework dependencies, allowing it to run smoothly on low-resource VPS, shared hosting environments, or any standard PHP stack.
It provides a complete end-to-end solution for managing clients, services, domains, automation, invoicing, support, payments and more!
Just some of the 109+ (and growing) Features
• Modern responsive UI
• Pretty URL routing (no query strings)
• Stripe, PayPal, Bank Transfer gateways
• Registrar modules: eNom + Domainbox
• Invoices, services, tickets, quotes, credits
• Multi-currency + pro-rata billing
• Domain search + TLD pricing manager
• Passkeys (WebAuthn) + email 2FA
• Modular plugin system (gateways, servers, registrars)
• Auto Login (cPanel hosting accounts auto login from the client dashboard)
• 109+ core features included as standard
• Entirely self-hosted, putting you back in control
Why WHMDC Is Entering the Market
The hosting industry has relied heavily on WHMCS for more than a decade.
While it remains widely used, many providers have expressed ongoing concerns about:
- Software aging & legacy code
- Increasing dependency complexity
- Framework overhead
- Recurring subscription costs
- Paid add-ons for essential functionality
- Slow UI evolution
- Limited transparency around roadmap updates
WHMDC aims to offer a fresh approach:
1. Lightweight Architecture
Pure PHP 8, no frameworks, no Composer—ideal for low-resource VPS and cPanel.
2. Full Feature Access
All premium features included as standard, not locked behind add-ons.
3. Modern Security Standards
Built-in passkeys, stronger session controls, and clean routing.
4. Predictable Ownership
Self-hosted, no locking, no forced ecosystem, no per-client billing.
5. Modern UI and UX
Clean, minimal, modern interface for both admin and client areas.
Early Look & Screenshots
Full information, preview screens, and feature list are available at:
WHMDC is currently preparing for wider public release.
Discussion, technical feedback, and industry perspectives are welcome, especially from providers interested in self-hosted alternatives or modern PHP 8 application design.
Comments
Do you have a working demo available? Would like to see how things feel as an end-user and admin.
Have there been or will there be any 3rd party security audits?
Open source? Ioncube encoded or similar?
Looks nice from the two screenshots but would like to take it for a spin via a demo if possible.
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Yes! We are currently deploying the WHMDC demo here - keep an eye out https://demo.whmdc.com/
Demo now Live - https://demo.whmdc.com/
Looks pretty good, how's the pricing?
Thank you - if you have any thoughts you could pop along to - https://demo.whmdc.com/news/whmdc-demo-launched
Thankyou
Also interested in these questions. Would be nice if they were answered.
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Hello!
Yes, third-party audits are planned once WHMDC reaches feature-complete beta. We’re already following secure development practices (prepared statements, strict API validation, CSRF protection, rate-limiting, separation of privileges, etc.), but an external audit is something we consider essential before stable release.
WHMDC will be source-available for reviewers with core licensing protection in place. We won’t be using IonCube. Our goal is to strike the right balance between transparency for users, security, and protecting the long-term sustainability of the project.
Modules, themes and integrations will remain fully open.
The public demo is now live at:
https://demo.whmdc.com
We welcome all feedback - good or bad - as this is shaping the platform before release.
If there are specific areas you’d like to inspect or test, we’re more than happy to open them up or provide temporary extended access.
Thanks again for the interest - genuinely appreciate the questions.
I’ll be keeping an eye to it aswell. Dev documentation too.
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It's always good to have another alternative but we really need something completely FOSS.
https://fossbilling.org
My compliments — the demo looks absolutely fantastic, and it even works flawlessly! This is truly excellent work, and I’m already looking forward to the final product. It’s a real competitor to WHMCS and similar systems. The name is also very well chosen from a strategic standpoint. A genuinely fascinating project!
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Thank you for the incredibly positive feedback, AGXL.
The goal behind WHMDC is to deliver a next-generation, self-hosted automation and billing platform that removes the limitations, complexity, and rising costs that providers face with existing solutions.
The demo represents only the beginning of what WHMDC is designed to achieve:
We’re excited to continue refining the platform in collaboration with the community and early testers. Your feedback helps ensure WHMDC becomes a true, modern alternative in the hosting automation space.
Thanks again for the support, more to come very soon!
Team WHMDC!
Cool. Seems like it'll have good core features. Who are you exactly? Surely you're someone around the community since you're building a billing system for hosting. Basically impossible for someone to build a system like this with no experience in hosting. Would be good to know who's behind it since there's zero information. Billing software that a business relies on 100% needs some transparency on who develops it. If there is I'd be happy to try it out.
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Hm, looks like codecanyon.net work. Few questions:
Transparency is essential for any platform that businesses rely on for billing and automation.
WHMDC is being developed by a small, dedicated team with extensive experience in:
• Hosting automation
• WHM/cPanel integrations
• Payment gateways
• Custom provisioning systems
• Internal business tooling for multi-site environments
Behind the scenes, the team has built and maintained a number of private systems for hosting, retail, and enterprise operations over the years. WHMDC is the evolution of that work, rebuilt from the ground up as a modern, modular, fully self-hosted platform with a long-term roadmap.
A full WHMDC About / Team page is being prepared for the main site, including development background, roadmap transparency, and public release timeline. This will launch before WHMDC exits early access so users have complete visibility.
🇬🇧 ?
Hello
WHMDC isn’t based on any template or Codecanyon product and the entire platform has been built from the ground up specifically for hosting automation, provisioning and billing.
The team behind it has spent years building internal systems, WHM/cPanel tooling and automation workflows, so this project is simply the public evolution of work that already existed privately.
As for frameworks, the architecture is intentionally lightweight and modular because it performs better for this type of system than dropping a large framework on top.
The codebase is structured, consistent and fully designed for long-term maintainability with nothing “vibe coded” or rushed together.
A full company overview will be published before public release, but the platform stands on its own merits, and anyone testing it can see immediately that it’s a purpose-built system rather than repurposed code.
Thankyou for your feedback, this is the point of showcasing our product. We understand companies have attachments to their existing products, we are simply offering an extra choice into the industry.
Please see free to have a play about or join our launch list at www.WHMDC.com
Yes, 100% based in the UK 💪
Fix your site first.. it's not accessible right now.
Hello, our systems are online?
How long will you run this until the big guys dump their cash pile and buy you folks out? (the same has happened with WHMCS, cPanel, SolusVM, etc.) and then the price hikes, shitty updates, bad support, etc. will start.
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@WHMDC I suggest removing the “Next-Gen **** Alternative” tagline before **** sends you a legal notice.
Consider this a non-legal notice from someone who is definitely not ****.
Yeah, and their logo is trademarked, too, and this is highly derivative. Yes, I'm aware it's 95% just a font.
https://www.whmcs.com/terms-of-service/
My pronouns are like/subscribe.
WHMDC isn’t something we’re building to flip or hand off. The whole idea is to keep it self-hosted, stable, and under our own direction — with everything you need, and nothing you don’t. The aim is to avoid the same acquisition/price-hike cycle everyone’s fed up with (we’ve been through it too, so we get it).
And naturally, as the community asks for new features, we’ll build them directly into the core, not leave people waiting years for basic functionality and improvements.
So no, there’s no plan to sell this off to a bigger company.
Hope that clears it up.
Thanks for the heads-up. To be clear, “WHMCS alternative” wording is used in the plain, descriptive sense as plenty of software markets itself as an alternative to something. It’s not claiming affiliation or using any of their branding.
That said, I understand how taglines can be misread in quick forum posts, so I’ll ask for tweaks to the wording moving forward just to avoid any unnecessary confusion.
Just to clarify, our branding isn’t derived from WHMCS’s logo or assets, and we’re not using any of their trademarks or protected design elements. The similarities begin and end with the fact that a lot of hosting software uses clean, modern typography.
We’re careful with IP, so there’s no conflict here, but thanks for the heads-up all the same.
@WHMDC
Does your PayPal integration support billing agreements or just basic PayPal with subscriptions?
Which control panels will you have integration for?
Also, one area where WHMCS specifically falls short, and has for years, is built-in ability for clients to choose a specific server location during the ordering process.
Many hosting providers offer several locations for their shared and reseller hosting products, and providers shouldn't have to jump through hoops and need custom code, hooks, etc., or have to use an addon module, to simply use multiple server locations with your billing app to allow clients to choose from those locations during signup.
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