Our Story - The Road to Version 5
Many of our customers have been with us for several years and have lived through some of the background history related here.
What must be stressed is that ModernBill has always strived to have the most stable, feature rich product available for your industry.
To this end, we have been the innovators and leaders in this area and occassionally innovation is not as easy as it looks.
If you are enjoying the current release of ModernBill, it is because of the exceedingly hard work of our developers
and the many great requests from our customerbase. So if you have participated in the current progress, "Thank You."
History of ModernBill
2001
Version 1.0
Q1-2001: ModernBill 1.0 was born out of neccessity. At the time, our founders were operating a small webhosting and design firm
that catered primarily to restaurants and small mom and pop manufacturers looking for an internet presence. With time, the
business operations partner requested an online billing tool for internal use to replace the notecards and standard accounting
software they had. The initial development of the software was well received in the hosting community and we immediately saw
the commercial application possibilities for it. The developers immediately started work on a commercial version which was ....
Version 2.0
Q3-2001: The first commercially available version of ModernBill wasn't much to look at and it didn't do much either. Some of you may
remember the orange layout and the throbbing brain on the original modernbill site. This first effort only had an administrative
interface with the ability to proceess credit cards. It was value priced and performed those functions well. However,
customers were requesting more, like an ordering process and a user interface. As we have always developed for customer requests we developed...
2002
Version 3.0
Q2-2002: It was Version 3 where ModernBill really started to break the mold. It included support for several gateways, basic domain registration
functionality, a new order process, a user interface, and integration was just begining for Control Panel functionality. However, as we
tried to extend the logic on the existing platform, we saw some obvious limitations. Every new integration peice required a core rewrite.
Every new feature inevitably broke 2 others. This was the result of the initial design being done solely for the needs of one company, ours.
We decided at that time to leave the hosting industry all together and focus on software development entirely. To reach the goals that our customers
set out for us, we started development on ...
Version 4.0
Q4-2002: Version 4.0 adopted three basic premises that are still the core fundamentals of ModernBill today.
First, the system should be designed so that no new functions should break old functionality. Second,
provide as much automation as possible to reduce the work load of the administrators. Third,
provide the administrator with the ability to run their business as they see fit. To do this,
ModernBill was designed modularly so that adding modules was seamless. Cronjobs were added to automate
many aspects of billing and provisioning. Finally, new business rules were added to support as many business
types as possible.
2003
Version 4.1
Q4-2003: As ModernBill continued to grow, new concepts were developed that were not even within the realm of possibility prior
to Version 4. New concepts added for 4.1 included Autosuspensions, Upgrades, Ala Carte ordering and FraudGuardian.
Whereas 4.0 focused primarily on automating the Admin experience, 4.1 focused on fully automating the User experience.
This natural progression put many new features in the customers hands including domain management and account unsuspend.
These features empowered the customer base to perform many complex functions but they were not necessarily redesigned
for the consumer experience.
2004
Version 4.2
Q4-2004: Customers indicated to us in the development of 4.1 that there were many other ancilary products that they would like to offer
from their modernbill installation. To meet these needs we did several things. We added SSLFactory to the product mix to automate
ssl certificate sales. We added modules for ISP services (freeradius) and subscription websites. We also vastly expanded the number
of supported modules. ModernBill currently sports over 50 modules including 15 control panels, 6 registrars and 25 gateways.
This wide range options has made ModernBill the most flexible system on the market.
2005
Version 4.3
Q1-2005: The current version of ModernBill is by far and away the best billing system on the market. With its wide array of modules,
business model support, third party integrations, and advanced feature set, it is ideal for many companies in the shared and reseller
hosting industries. It is also being used by many companies in the ISP, game server, dedidicated server, colocation, and web design markets.
We also see folks utilizing the solution for many generic billing applications like software sales, subscription website access,
wifi hotspots and even office rent management.
Does this make it perfect software? No. As we have learned over time, you will not even be able to conceive of the next best feature set
until you have finished developing what you have. As our customers get new versions in their hands, they start imagining for us the next great
feature. This time, the sum total of that dreaming was an entirely new version. As our first whole version release in over 2 years, you can expect
it to be great, but let's take a moment to look at the reasons why a new version was necessary.
2006
Version 5.0
Q3-2006: Customers have been consistently pointing to three general areas of improvement that they would like to see us take on. First, they told
us that they wanted to improve the customer experience. To achieve this, we are revamping both the order process and the user interface.
As mentioned above, the user interface was not redesigned as addittional functionality was added. This made it necessarry for customers
to click several layers deep to access certain features. The new interface will be much more graphical and surface the functionality
better for ease of use. Version 5 will also have multiple order form types including one with shopping cart style functionality for
purchasing multiple items/services simultaneously and a single page order form type for customers with simple business plans.
Second, customers have indicated that the configuration process is a little steep and that the learning curve on the product was substantial.
We are addressing this by making the user configuration areas more intuituitive, supressing unnecessary options for basic users, and adding
context sensitive help. ModernBill is an extensive program that can be attached to dozens of third party products. The very nature of this
flexibility adds a certain level of complexity to the set up process. We will use an improved design, configuration wizards, and internal test scripts
to ease this process and attempt to suppress certain functionality usually used only by advanced users unless requested by the user.
Third, customers wanted the ability to extend ModernBill to meet a wide range of needs. The two area that this is most obvious are in module
development and in system localization. The most commonly asked question that we get is "Can we get a module to do X?" It would be impossible
for us to develop every module that gets requestes, though we do try. In fact, Version 5 will have over a dozen new modules that do not exist in
Version 4. It was obvious to us that we need to reconstruct our architecture so that many third party modules could be developed for individual
use. The result is groundbreaking. MBAPI (ModernBill Application Program Interface) is a completely document systemwide API for our billing engine.
This means that development of custom features, modules or other integration will be far easier. We will continue our tradition of accepting
and reviewing code contributions for possible inclusion into the production version.
The other way customers are trying to extend their systems is through increased localization and personalization. As part of a greater sales
presentation to the customer, ModernBill will try to fit in more seamlessly with existing content and local custom. Version 5 will have greater
support for languages, currencies, tax systems, accounting rules and multiple gateways. Addittionally, Version 5 is being built using Smarty
templates to make seamless integration to existing websites musch easier. By separating out the display layer from the integration layers,
modifications can be made with the confidence that it will not affect functionality. These architectural changes were just not possible by
simply rewiting the existing code. This new paradigm is the heart of version 5 and makes it the most powerful billing system ever
prepared for the sale of online services.
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