Skip to content
Register

Open-source billing panel for tiny hosts

General Discussion by Hana5 28 replies 7K views
Hana5

Member OP

GPU poor

#1

Open-source billing panel for tiny hosts

Please help me understand. I want to make WHMCS-alternative. Server cost too much for small host. I have some code from last project, help.

Current features:
- client management
- invoice generation
- basic support ticket
- payment gateway for Stripe and PayPal

I need help with architecture. Current stack is Node.js and PostgreSQL. Should I use microservices? Or monolith is fine for small host.

Please join if interested. Repo is on my gitea instance. I will migrate to github later for visibility.

Will you help?

8-char NTLM found in 4min 32sec
cpanelliw780

Member

shared hosting survivor

#2

Lol microservices for a billing panel is hilarious I ran a host on a single $7 vps for three years with everything monolithic and never had issues the complexity people add for no reason kills me Honestly just ship something that works cPanel has a billing api thats ancient but solid you could probably wrap that and call it a day but then youre tied to their ecosystem which sucks Whats the actual gap youre filling here theres already a bunch of open source panels that nobody uses because they look like garbage and have no docs focus on ux first code second thats my take

PascalOvid

Member

#3

The server for billing panel exist already, no? Why we make another one? Why not contribute to existent project?

My VPS runs Hestia, so I know the panel space. If you make new panel, make it for specific niche: hosts without cPanel, without Softaculous, only bare metal and KVM. Let us talk architecture: monolith is good for start. Microservices for "scalability" is dream of devops without clients, so.

256 cores for a blog. why not?
mediaaustin

Member

Deliverability Nerd

#4

Forty-seven dependencies for a PDF invoice.

SPF, DKIM, DMARC — holy trinity ✉️
quinnbizz

Member

#5

PayPal gateway and no mention of tax handling? That's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

...
pam3

Member

Latency Witch

#6

What about tax handling. You mentioned Stripe and PayPal but no tax engine.

100% packet loss at hop 3
Hana5

Member OP

GPU poor

#7
pam3 said:
What about tax handling. You mentioned Stripe and PayPal but no tax engine.

Tax engine is on the list but I haven't designed it yet. For now I was planning to let Stripe handle the heavy lifting since they have automatic tax in many regions

Do you have experience with VAT MOSS or US sales tax in a self-hosted setup. I am wondering if I should integrate a third-party API like TaxJar or build a simple rules engine myself

The rules engine feels safer for hosts that want to keep everything in-house but I don't want to drown in rate tables

8-char NTLM found in 4min 32sec
cpanelliw780

Member

shared hosting survivor

#8
pam3 said:
What about tax handling

This is actually the real killer for any billing panel, open source or not

Tax rules change constantly, nexus thresholds are a nightmare, and if you get it wrong you're personally liable

Stripe Tax exists now but it's per-transaction pricing which eats your margins on cheap VPS plans

Honestly if I were building this I'd punt on tax entirely and integrate with something like Quaderno or even just export to CSV for an accountant

Building a tax engine is not a weekend project, it's a full time legal team

Bob

Member

3-2-1 rule

#9
pam3 said:
What about tax handling. You mentioned Stripe and PayPal but no tax engine.

Good catch, that's the part that always bites people later. Stripe does have Tax now but it's not available everywhere and the rates change constantly. If you're tiny you might just eat the complexity and use Stripe Tax or a third party like Quaderno, but wiring that into an open source panel cleanly is rough because every jurisdiction wants something different.

On the architecture question I actually agree with PascalOvid here. Start monolithic and split later if you're drowning, which you won't be. The hard part of billing isn't the scaling it's the edge cases around proration, credits, chargebacks, and yes tax. Microservices just let you fail in more places at once.

Did you ever figure out if you're targeting global hosts or just one country? That changes the tax problem completely.

srelet

Member

#10
pam3 said:
What about tax handling. You mentioned Stripe and PayPal but no tax engine.

This is the real pain point. Stripe Tax and PayPal's built-in tools only get you so far, and once you're selling across state or country lines it gets messy fast.

For a Time4VPS target market I'd honestly look at whether you even need an engine on day one. Plenty of solo operators handle tax as a manual quarterly process until revenue justifies automation. Not elegant, but it keeps scope sane.

Did you ever decide on the architecture question? Monolith still feels right for a project with one active developer.

Post a reply

You need an account to reply. Log in or register to join the conversation.

Post reply Preview Save draft