Our latest download is a cheat sheet that will help you implement WHMCS as your new billing system – guiding you through the installation process and giving you best practice examples of how to effectively use WHMCS.

To successfully run your hosting reseller business, you must devote your attention to sales and marketing activities. However, tracking invoices and managing clients can dominate your workload. The solution is to implement a billing system like WHMCS, via an API on your bare metal cloud.

Implementing a new billing system can be a challenge, but with the right approach, making the change to WHMCS will be well worth it. Luckily, we have created a handy guide highlighting the right approach. The WHMCS guide shows a three step process to successfully implementing WHMCS:

1. Plan
2. Communicate
3. Test

At every stage, the guide provides you with a handy checklist and best practice examples to keep you on the right path to success.

Many companies fail to plan how they will use WHMCS. With the vast community of third-party developers creating numerous add-ons in the WHMCS Marketplace, it’s important that you understand what add-ons your business requires. Make use of WHMCS’s support resources throughout the process, from their FAQs and documentation to tutorial videos. WHMCS prides itself on having the best pre-sales support in their sector, so make sure you utilise this by signing up for free demos and tutorials.

In the communication stage of the process, the guide highlights best practice when it comes to informing your clients of the switch. By notifying your clients well ahead of installation, providing them with details and benefits of WHMCS, there should be no loss in trust.

Once you plan your implementation of WHMCS and communicate this to your clients, it maybe tempting to start using your WHMCS with clients. Although this may work, you run the risk of updates breaking your configuration. To avoid disaster, the guide details the final stage of the process, testing. The guide will suggest you obtain a second licence key for testing and reminds you to run tests after every update.

We know that all hosting resellers companies are different, but our basic framework to successfully implementing WHMCS will lead you down the right path. So don’t hesitate, download our WHMCS guide now.

Today, around 40% of the world’s population has a viable connection to the internet, and, with that number growing rapidly every day, it has never been easier for your cloud hosting reseller business to connect with its customers online.

In theory, with such an increase in accessibility, the services of a middleman would be rendered obsolete. However, in reality cloud hosting reselling can be an extremely effective tool to increase sales and add value for the vendor, the reseller and the customer. Below are some nifty tips and tricks to maximise effective reselling.

Know Your Customer

Reiterated time and time again, the necessity of knowing your customer has become something of a cliché – but with good reason. A surprising number of salespeople tend to ‘mind read’ for a quick sell and don’t take the necessary time getting to know the wants and needs of the customer, for instance, whether they need IaaS or bare metal cloud. The basic rule is if you seem knowledgeable when it comes to your customers problem, they will probably be interested in your solution.

Challenging Preconceptions

Many salespeople see selling as a linear process with only two outcomes – either the prospective customer chooses you or they choose your competitor. However, there is a third option which can happen up to 60% of the time – they don’t choose either. There can be a range of reasons why this can happen from a simple change of heart to a significant change in circumstance, however these instances can invariably be combatted by challenging customer preconceptions of the product – e.g. challenging the idea that dedicated servers are now obsolete.

The Customer is the Hero

You may well have heard the saying ‘the customer is always right’ – a premise that is correct in theory, but remains flawed in practice. Enter the ‘hero assessment’ – every story must have a hero, and as a reseller the objective is to make your customer just that. The entire role of the salesperson is to make this happen, enabling your customers to see what has changed in their world and how they can successfully adapt and thrive is essential to successful reselling.

Not All Clouds Are Equal

Although Cloud Hosting is now recognised as a household term, the mistake that many salespeople make is presuming that the prospective customer has a good understanding of the different types of computing options on offer. Educating your prospects about the three different cloud models: public, private and hybrid cloud, can ensure a level of visibility and demonstrate an interest in meeting their needs, rather than just trying to make a quick sale.

Focus on Your USP

There is bound to be a significant overlap between what you can offer to your prospective customers and what your closest competitors provide. The trick is not to focus on the overlapping provisions but concentrate primarily on your unique selling point- being able to demonstrate that you can offer an extra, useful service, such as the offer of bare metal cloud, that is not readily available from your competition will immediately make you a more attractive option for the customer.

Cloud Server Visibility

No matter the perceived benefits of Cloud Hosting, many prospective customers simply aren’t able to look past the fact they no longer see the flashing lights in their server rooms telling them that everything is okay. This reluctance stems from a lack of control of being able to fix servers manually and lack of visibility on identifying the problem. Transparency when managing these concerns is best practice, opting to demonstrate the support and customisability on offer from the cloud hosting provider will provide reassurement.

Share Success Stories

Another cliché that salespeople love to throw around is that ‘it’s important to believe in your product’ – this  encourages salespeople to be more invested in the product they are selling, and improves sales as a result. A much better rule of thumb is that ‘it’s important that the customer believes in your product’ – by promoting the successes of businesses that have used cloud hosting to its full potential, your product becomes a much more enticing enterprise.

Successful negotiations between you and your customer are dependant on a range of different factors. By adopting these methods as common practice you will not only improve customer satisfaction but also see a measurable increase in cloud hosting resales.

Focusing on improving you customer satisfaction leaves little time for admin tasks. To free up your time, plug into WHMCS from our provisioning platform and let it take care of billing your clients and tracking invoices. If this sounds like the support you need, be sure to download our WHMCS guide for hositing resellers.

As it helpfully spells out in its catchy title, Web Host Manager Complete Solution is an all-in-one client management platform, which employs a high degree of automation. The platform gained swift popularity following its 2005 launch, by combining billing, support and domain registration into one lucrative offering, which has proved particularly appealing and convenient to hosting resellers.

WHMCS provides support and billing solutions, with the aim of easing operational pressures for online businesses. And if you feel like your business is wasting energy on admin then the platform could be a smart choice. Here’s a closer look at some of the benefits:

1. Security

If security is of paramount importance to your organisation, then WHMCS will suit, as it’s widely touted as having a major edge over all others when it comes to security.

With alerts, security support and automatic bans in place for repeated login failure attempts WHMCS has a strong track record for maintaining a secure environment for its users and names security its number one priority.

2. Automation

Why do something manually when it could be done for you? WHMCS enables users to incorporate automation throughout the entire billing process, including: invoice generation, account creation, suspension/termination, payment processing and reminders.

3. Support

Relationships between business and consumer are won and lost over the ability to provide fast, useful and dedicated support, whilst poor customer service is consistently voted the top reason that consumers choose to switch service providers.

WHMCS facilitates social media integration to harness the power of sites such as Twitter and Facebook, whilst an intuitive support ticket system allows for the tracking of client communication, enabling multiple staff to respond to the needs of the consumer. With an array of integrated support tools, maintaining relationships is straightforward.

4. Billing

Ultimately, the billing for goods and services is one of the most important aspects of any business, with transparency a key factor in customer satisfaction levels. WHMCS sends a comprehensive breakdown of goods and services rendered via an invoice, informing clients of exactly what they’ve purchased and maintaining a healthy working relationship.

Does your company trade on a global scale? WHMCS allows you to bill in as many foreign currencies as you want whilst accepting payment in no less than 75 integrated payment methods, so you shouldn’t struggle to find a method of payment that works for your organisation.

5. Personalisation

Any reputable client management platform should understand that your organisation is intrinsically unique, and while a basic template may well work for some, it’s not necessarily the right choice for you. WHMCS gives you the opportunity to take control and customise. With a wide array of templates and widgets as well as multiple language options, it’s never been easier to stand out.

6. Industry-Leading partners

WHMCS has partnered with key players specialising in the various aspects of their product portfolio. For instance WHMCS is partnered with hosting resellers, such as Enom, and security scanning services, such as Comodo, allowing the creation of discounts and offers.

It’s also allied to popular control panels, such as Plesk, DirectAdmin and cPanel. Although WHMCS supports other billing options, cPanel’s financial stake in the company makes it the preferred solution and the partnership has resulted in a cohesive pairing of control panel functionality and billing.

WHMCS has also built a large community of 3rd party developers. The benefit to users is the availability of add-ons and enhanced templates that integrate with the core WHMCS app.

What Are the Alternatives?

As with all market leaders, WHMCS have seen a number of users checking whether the grass is greener by switching to less established billing and invoicing companies – with varying degrees of success. For instance, some move to Harvest and Pancake for their simpler interface, while others feel more secure with Hostbill or Besta due to their frequent updates.

But many users come crying back to WHMCS. Most alternatives suffer from a slimmed down functionality or and lack the community of third-party developers boasted by WHMCS. Additionally, WHMCS offer a cheaper service than their rivals and provides clients with good pre-sales support by offering free trials and demos.

The Verdict

While some alternatives show promise and are worth watching, most fall short. WHMCS is automated, it’s secure, and you can customise to make sure that your business remains how you want it, down to the last detail. We believe it’s the best platform on the market, so Redstation offers an integrated provisioning platform for WHMCS to make things simple for our resellers.

To make the transition to WHMCS even simpler, be sure to download our ‘How to Get the Best from WHMCS’ guide for hosting resellers.