Originally designed for webhosting services, ModernBill is also appropriate for ISPs. With a wide range of modules available for added functionality, the application automates many key functions.

by Jeff Goldman [June 16, 2004]

ModernGigabyte was founded in 1999 by Jeremy Christ and Michael Fountain as a web design firm. The two developed their own billing solution for that business, and soon found that other providers had a need for a similar application. "Suddenly, they had a full fledged product on their hands," says Jonathan McCarrick, the company's Sales and Marketing Director.

That solution, ModernBill, began as a simple administrative tool and gradually took on more and more functionality. The latest version, McCarrick says, focuses on ease of use for the end user, as well as for the administrator, with a range of features designed to help customers solve their own problems. "In the end, if a customer can help themselves, they will create less support costs," he says.

ModernBill (502) 566-7754 http://www.modernsupport.com/helpdesk

What was surprising to discover, McCarrick adds, is that automating customer support features not only saves money, but it makes customers happier. "Customers prefer it," he says. "They don't really want to call some number and get a convoluted message system where they have to hit five different prompts before they can actually talk to a person. They would rather simply take care of the problem."

Now that ModernGigabyte is focused on marketing its billing solution, it no longer advertises its original web design or webhosting offerings. "We maintain the same customers that we have over time, but we're no longer actively seeking any new customers," McCarrick says. "We don't want to compete with our own customers."

Modular design
While the application was initially designed for webhosting providers, it can certainly be used by ISPs—and an ISP-specific version is in the works. "Initially, it won't do as much as we want it to, but it will do as much as a lot of our competition does now," McCarrick says.

Key to the ModernBill offering is its modular design. Different modules can integrate easily with various control panels, third party databases, and domain registrars, and can also enhance the system with a wide range of additional functionality. "You can add as many different kinds of services to ModernBill as you like," McCarrick says.

All modules are also extensively customizable. "One of the critical things about our business is that we try not to impose our business rules on our customers," McCarrick says. "We try to make everything as flexible as possible so that if you want to introduce your own set of business rules, ModernBill can cope with it."

ModernBill's pricing structure, McCarrick says, helps to make it attractive for providers of all sizes. "That's why we have a $179 introductory price for our own license," he says. "That's why we have a $25 lease, so that just about anybody can get ahold of our product. But in the end, we know that we have a better product than that price—that the product really is worth every bit of $500, if not $1,000."

Size matters
The product's target market, in general, is small to medium-size businesses. "To us, 'small to medium' means 200 to 500 customers," McCarrick says. "It's all relative, but there are a number of those businesses out there who need a product like ours, and by number, there are more of them than there are of the million-customer companies."

That doesn't mean, though, that there's any significant limitation on customer size. "We have a number of companies that we know are using our product successfully that have 20,000 to 30,000 customers, and they don't have scalability issues," McCarrick says. "And we're building out our product to be even more scalable than it is now—we're adding ADODB support to the file set."

While ModernBill currently runs on MySQL, the aim in the future will be to provide clients with more options. "If you're a telco-size company, you may choke the MySQL server—not because of ModernBill, but because of the number of connections that customers are making to it," McCarrick says. "That's why we're adding ADODB support, so you can run it on your Oracle database or your MSSQL database."

The application can also be run on a variety of different platforms. "If you can run PHP and MySQL successfully on your server, you can get ModernBill running," McCarrick says. "We have several hundred Windows users right now. We have a handful of Mac users. We of course have customers using it in just about every flavor of Linux, and we have them running FreeBSD and just about every version of UNIX."

More automation
ModernGigabyte releases new versions of the software on a quarterly basis, but also makes daily builds available. "For some of our smaller companies that are competing for that last penny that might be available out there, that can be a make-or-break for their business if they have one feature that nobody else has," McCarrick says.

Jesse Schoberg is the owner of LJ Host, a Wisconsin-based company that offers webhosting, web design, outsourcing, and dialup access. When they first started as a web design firm, they did all their billing by hand—but when they began to offer hosting and dialup, they quickly found they needed something more. "It wasn't profitable to hand-bill any of that stuff," Schoberg says.

Schoberg tried a number of different demos before he eventually settled on ModernBill. "It seemed to be the simplest to use and had the features I needed, and so I went with it," he says. "I've been using it for about a year, and it's been excellent. It gets the job done, it's customizable enough that it can flex to do what you need it to, and there's a pretty good user base in their forums."

The program's modular design, Schoberg says, is a key strength. "The module that I like best is the one that works with eNom," he says. "It basically allows your signup form to enable automated registration of domains through your eNom account. Just like anything, the more you can automate, the less work you have to do."

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