WHMCS.com review

First Impressions

For every budding entrepreneur that wants to get into the web hosting game, WHMCS is a name to keep in mind. WHMCS, which stands for “Web Hosting Manager Complete Solution”, is a web hosting automation company that first opened their doors way back in 2003. It was founded by Matt Pugh, who really only wanted to create a system that would automate and scale his own hosting business, but he saw the gap in the market, and his business quickly grew into the leading company in this field and now forms part of the larger WebPros group. This UK-based company provides software to hosting providers that manages every aspect of running a hosting business and takes care of things like auto provisioning of hosting accounts, automated billing and a ticket support system, as well as a platform that easily integrates with all major control panels, security vendors, and more.

Trial Period

This software provider unfortunately doesn’t offer any free trials to test them out, however, they do offer the next best thing, and that is a 30-day money-back guarantee. If within the first month you don’t feel entirely satisfied with what they offer, you can cancel your plan for a full refund.

If you fall outside this period, refunds are only granted if issues were caused by their software where it failed to perform as specified, and not if your server experienced any type of failure.

Billing Cycle

All their plans are billed monthly and in advance, which means if you sign up today, you will pay the full amount for the month upfront.

They currently accept payments via PayPal as well as all major credit cards.

Control Panel

WHMCS’s system supports a wide range of control panels such as Plesk, DirectAdmin, cPanel, which is a partner company, Interworx, Virtualmin, Website Panel, as well as Helm, a rarely offered control panel that was designed for Windows-based web hosting. So, although their software was built with the LAMP stack in mind (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), one can run it on Windows servers too, but it requires some extra expertise for the setup.

Limits

Their plans are available in two options, Self Hosted, where you just use their software but use your own server and infrastructure, and Fully Managed, where they take care of everything.

The Self Hosted range has 3 plans to choose from. These start with the “Plus” plan which will set you back $34.95 per month and has a limit of 250 active clients, next up is the “Professional” plan, which costs $54.95 per month and comes with a limit of 250 active users, and lastly there’s the “Business” plan, which has different prices for users between 1000, all the way up to 10,000. These prices range from $84.95 per month, up to $399.95 per month.

Fully Manage is has the “Starter” plan, that costs only $9.99 per month and it limits you to 25 active users and then bills you $0.40 per additional client (up to 50), the “Growth” plan is $25 per month with a limit of 250 users and a fee of $0.25 per additional client, and lastly the “Expansion” which sells for $75 per month and has a limit of 300 users with the $0.25 per additional user fee.

Website Builder

When you sign up for one of WHMCS’s plans, you will get the Weebly website builder included free of charge to offer to your hosting clients. This builder is a user-friendly drag-and-drop builder that is easy to use and provides all the tools to build a professional looking site quickly and without any coding knowledge. It also comes with a variety of editable templates, basic email-marketing, and eCommerce options.

Within the WHMCS admin section, Weebly is offered as an automated add on via MarketConnect, so when a customer orders it, WHMCS instantly provisions the account and links it to the hosting account for that specific client, which is an easy way for hosting providers to expand their services while keeping everything managed from a single control panel.

Security

If you want to start a hosting business, you better be sure the security you offer is in place. Luckily, WHMC includes some solid security features such as two-factor authentication, IP blocking, and detailed activity logs to help safeguard both you, the hosting provider and your client’s data. It also uses ionCube encryption to protect its source code, integrates with fraud detection services like MaxMind and FraudLabs Pro, and supports SSL/TLS. The client area also has rate limiting on login attempts, so after a few failed attempts within a certain time frame, the system temporarily blocks further tries.

OS

Whilst WHMCS doesn’t recommend any specific Linux operating system, any that is compatible with the LAMP stack should work just fine. These include AlmaLinux, Debian, Ubuntu, Rocky Linux, FreeBSD, Fedora, and even Arch Linux, but is not limited to the ones I listed. Keep in mind that WHMCS provides the hosting system, so which OS you want to offer your users are entirely up to you.

Support

When you use their software, you have the tools to provide your customers with a system that already has access to support tickets, email importing, knowledgebase, downloads, and service status tools, and when you need support from WHMCS yourself, you can get hold of them via support tickets. Their agents are super-friendly, quick to respond and know their product very well – a pleasure to deal with!

Conclusion

If you ever thought about starting a new web hosting business, or to maybe streamline your existing one, then do consider WHMCS. Their system takes all the hassles out of running a web hosting business and doesn’t require you to be highly technical either – it just runs like a well-oiled machine without issues. Their support team is excellent and prices are really low for what you are getting. I highly recommend them!