Massive price increase for WHMCS customers and cancelling support & updates for lifetime owned licenses, what are the alternatives?

[gijs007]

As a long time WHMCS user I have a owned license. WHMCS just informed me that we can no longer extend support and updates for owned licenses as of immediate. To continue to receive support and updates owned users are forced to switch to their monthly license model.

In addition to this WHMCS also announced a massive price increase for their monthly license model: https://assets.whmcs.com/customer-licensing-guide-2021.pdf
What is massive? Imagine you're on an owned license (with unlimited active clients) and pay 99.95$ for support per year, to get a comparable license, you now pay 1,299.95 $ per month. That is an increase of 156X for this scenario. (Granted, if you don't need support for unlimited active clients, the price difference is smaller, depending on the actual active clients. But even in the best case scenario we're still talking about more than doubling the annual pricing.)
As you'd expect there are several topics on their forum and WebHostingTalk, with customers complaining about the massive price increase.

Any how, I'm curious what other users here (and perhaps TCAdmin?) are going to migrate to.
On the WHMCS forum I see a lot of people mentioning blesta, which looks promising and is mostly opensource. However it lacks a TCAdmin integration at this time, and at first glance seems to have less features than WHMCS.

I'm also considering HostBill and ClientExec, since they already have TCAdmin integration.
I seem to prefer ClientExec based on the license model.
Although at first glance HostBill seems to be more mature (For example it has more build in integrations with payment gateways)
Unfortunately at a second glance, HostBill also frequently changed their pricing and licensing in the past: https://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1414173
Which would be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire...

For most of us a smooth migration from WHMCS is probably the most important factor. Personally I depend on my business to pay the mortgage, so I'd hate to lose customers or have to bother them with reconfiguring their products and PayPal billing agreements.

Lets use this thread to discuss alternatives to WHMCS and migration experiences.

[Jimmy-CS]

They definitely have a monopoly it seem (only because they're so universal).

I tried ClientExec many years ago and was impressed and would entertain the possibility of going to them if TCA was compatible as of late.

I will most likely stay with WHMCS for the time being, however, it's my belief that anyone locked in should remain locked in. It's unfair to screw your longtime customers. New customers, sure. But, don't screw the customers that have helped build you up to where you are today...

[CloudNine]

Owned licences have been obliterated ( no more support/updates ) despite paying for lifetime..

Then the new billing.. jesus christ..

 

Don't rule out blesta, cheap, ui is dated but it's nearly 100% open source