Publish Date: Monday, June 18, 2007
Dear Valued Resellers,
It is our pleasure to inform you that the previously announced major improvements to our billing system have been implemented successfully. Now that the back end system upgrade is a fact, you and your customers will be able to purchase services in a much more user friendly reseller hosting billing environment, where order processing and verification are faster than ever.
We would like to ask you once again for your feedback about the newly improved billing system. The more reports we receive, the more certain it will be that any eventual problems have been detected and therefore eliminated in good time by our team of developers on duty.
With this significant upgrade - we are paving the way for lots more upcoming introductions to our billing system in the foreseeable future, such as:
Multi-currency pricing - the next major billing upgrade, which is planned to be implemented by the end of June. It will let each web hosting reseller of ours to set up the plan prices in different currencies and display them on their web hosting stores (on the templates, remote order forms and through API), which will allow for much better targeted marketing campaigns. For instance, if you are a USA free hosting reseller and decide to penetrate the highly prospective European hosting market, then you simply need to set up the service prices in EUR; or you may decide to address the hosting demands of a specific market, such as the UK market, then your choice should be the GBP currency option. The multi-currency pricing feature will include the following currencies: USD, GBP, EUR, CAD and AUD .
Recurring billing - this upgrade is intended to give you more freedom in terms of annual payment cycle set-up. Thus you and your customers will stop worrying about expiration dates any more - renewals will be processed automatically if the option is chosen. This upgrade will be tightly connected with the introduction of banking into our billing system (our bank will be Barclays Bank, UK's 3rd biggest bank), which will become the main payment method along with PayPal. The direct work with a bank will significantly cut off billing expenses, making our system much more cost-effective. The recurring billing solution is scheduled for release in August/September.
Multiple domain registrations for multiple years - this is a really important option for serious hosting business intentions, which is scheduled for release in July. You and your customers have been using intensively the multiple-domain-registration option for about a year now and that makes the multiple-year upgrade reasonable. With this upgrade your and your clients' domain names will be protected against expiration and the page ranking of your web pages will be improved as well.
Sole domain registration accounts (no hosting) - this service is purposed to attract customers who need only domain name registration(s) or transfer(s), without hosting. This way customers, who need only domain names, will be able to register or transfer as many domains as they wish, managing their registrations and parking through hosting account Control panels. Each 'domain only' account will easily obtain hosting capabilities as soon as you order a web hosting plan of the ones that are available. This service is the answer to many inquiries received by our Customer Support department and we will do our best to bring it online in July.
Semi-Dedicated Server plans - an option for offering Semi-Dedicated Server Hosting plans on the free hosting reseller web stores, which is expected to be available within the 1st half of July. These plans are designed to match the requirements of those customers who need more CPU resources to run their hosting services normally. We are also intending to launch Dedicated Servers and Virtual Private Servers (VPS) for sale but the completion of this task will take more time and we will announce it when the time comes.
Improved Reseller API - our intentions are to launch complete API software that will allow full management of the hosting service offered to you and your customers, and will be different from the API, which is currently available. This solution will allow each web hosting reseller to easily manage all stages of hosting service packages development (custom hosting plans and domain registration), as well as of pricing and billing system set-up, using their own shopping cart through various billing providers. This complete hosting solution will make you an almost independent hosting provider but will require certain dedication from your side, related to a substantial amount of funds, deposited into your reseller wallet.
