WHMCS vs Blesta – Web Hosting Management Platform Comparison

WHMCS vs Blesta is often a comparison made when web hosting business owners are trying to make a decision on a billing and customer management platform.

They both can do lot for your web hosting business, especially if you are in the reseller hosting business, and both are considered complete web hosting management platforms. However, there are some notable feature differences, and most importantly to some web hosting businesses, there is a difference in price.

Here’s a breakdown between the web hosting management platforms and our two cents on whether or not WHMCS is worth the higher price tag:

Important Note: WHMCS Is Not A Web Control Panel!

I should clarify some common confusion right at the start – neither Blesta nor WHCMS is a replacement for a web control panel. You can easily get confused by the name, but WHMCS and WHM/cPanel are completely different software packages.

A web control panel, like Plesk, InterWorx, and DirectAdmin, is software that manages your server, and you can use it to configure security, install updates, and perform any one of the thousands of tasks of server management.

Even if you use WHMCS or Blesta, you will likely still need a separate control panel unless you’re experienced enough to handle everything from the command line – which almost no one is truthfully.

To be clear, WHMCS and Blesta are billing and automation packages. Using them, you can create web hosting packages, manage customers, handle support requests via ticketing, and more.

WHMCS vs Blesta Pricing: Blesta is FAR Cheaper

The most noticeable difference between WHMCS vs Blesta is the pricing.

As of March 2023, Blesta allows you to purchase a license outright so that you never have to renew it, and you get access to support and updates forever. Here’s a screenshot of their pricing:

As you can see, even if you don’t choose the permanent license, the yearly renewal cost is much cheaper than WHMCS, whose pricing is as below:

You can see that WHMCS has no option to purchase a permanent license, and its pricing is monthly, compared to Blesta with yearly pricing with a discounted renewal rate after the first year.

For the first year, you pay almost the same amount for both on the cheapest plan, but after that, Blesta is six times cheaper than WHMCS!

So in summary, if you plan to use a web hosting management platform for longer than a year, it’s worth taking in consideration the cheaper renewal rate of Blesta.

Blest has a Trial Period of 30-Days

Unlike WHMCS, Blesta allows you to test the software on a domain for 30 days before you make a final purchase decision. It’s how I was able to write my Blesta installation tutorial since I would have had to purchase a license for WHMCS to write a similar guide.

WHMCS does have a test installation that you can use to get an overview of how the software works, so you’re not flying completely blind.

Blesta vs WHMCS Interface: WHMCS Wins

This is obviously a matter of personal preference, but the WHMCS interface is much easier to grasp at first glance than Blesta. Here’s a screenshot of what you see when you first log in to WHMCS:

I like that WHMCS has a complete list of all functionality on the left-hand sidebar. The area has various sections that you can open and close to get a complete list of all the actions you can take. This lets you get to where you want quickly and see, at a glance, all the functionality that WHMCS has.

Compare this to Blesta, whose interface leaves you a bit lost when trying to figure out what you can and can’t do:

The menu bar on top expands to give you a list of actions, but it’s not as comprehensive as that provided by WHMCS.

However, I feel that this difference in interface is only relevant to those who are new to either software. Much like many tools or software in general, there’s a learning curve initially but then you know exactly how to do certain tasks.

So while WHMCS has a better interface than Blesta, I feel this value diminishes as you grow used to the workflow. Eventually, the speed of operations levels out between the two.

Blesta vs WHMCS Modules: WHMCS Wins

Both Blesta and WHMCS allow you to install modules to extend the basic web hosting management functionality. However, WHMCS has a vaster library of modules via the WHMCS marketplace. Blesta has its own page on modules, and you can see some of the important ones there, but nothing compared to WHMCS.

Let’s take a look at a couple of modules available with WHMCS but not with Blesta.

WHMCS MarketConnect

WHMCS MarketConnect allows you to integrate 3rd party cloud services into your web hosting. This can enhance your reseller hosting business quite a bit beyond just simple hosting services. These 3rd party cloud services can allow you to earn additional income via commissions, improving the experience for your customers, and expand your offering to other areas without needing to specialize in them yourself.

For example, let’s say your customer isn’t satisfied with basic LetsEncrypt certificates or AutoSSL and wishes to purchase a dedicated SSL for their website. Perhaps it’s a sensitive industry like healthcare, and they want to reassure their clients or perhaps meet some government regulations. On your own, you would not be able to issue SSL certificates that meet these requirements. So rather than asking your customers to purchase it themselves, you can install the MarketConnect plugin and sell them SSL certificates right from their dashboard!

As a bonus, you can likely setup an affiliate account with that business and earn additional revenue, like you can from many third party developers and products. It’s a win/win situation for everyone involved. Your client is also a lot stickier and less likely to leave you for another hosting provider if you offer them the services they need all in one place.

WHMCS Knowledge Base Features

If you want to minimize the number of support requests created in your support system, a good idea is to create a knowledge base for your customers that answers often-asked questions specific to your service, policies, and packages.

A knowledge base can be invaluable for your customers and can improve your overall support system and hosting company.

For example, many of your clients may have questions about the CPU restrictions on their packages. Many web hosts don’t make this information public and are likely to receive many questions about CPU throttling. By creating a knowledge base that answers this question, you cut down on support time, making for a happier experience both for your users and you.

WHMCS has built-in knowledge base options, whereas Blesta’s capabilities in this regard are lacking.

These are just two examples of the kind of benefits that WHMCS brings compared to Blesta. They’re not deal breakers – particularly concerning the knowledgebase, you could always replicate one with a blog on a subdomain of your hosting website. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide how much you want to work around and how much in-built capability is worth.

Blesta is Open Source vs WHMCS

The other major difference between WHMCS and Blesta is that the latter is based on open source, whereas the code base of WHMCS is closed. Blesta only has a couple of files that are not open-sourced and these deal with license checks.

The benefit of an open-source code base is that security flaws are easier to find and individuals can customize the code to suit their requirements. While WHMCS is quite flexible and has many themes, it can’t approach the customization of an open-source framework.

However, an open-source codebase for a web hosting billing platform probably won’t benefit most people. So unless you have the expertise and motivation to exploit this benefit, it won’t matter much to you.

Verdict: WHMCS is Better, But It’ll Cost You!

In my opinion, there’s no doubt that WHMCS is a better product if you want to invest in all aspects of client management. However, the price difference between Blesta and WHMCS is so vast that it can override all the other considerations. Even though it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of WHMCS, Blesta is a perfectly serviceable client management system, and with a one-time license that allows you to use it forever, I can see it beating out WHMCS on the price factor alone.

If you are just starting a reseller hosting business, and you primarily want a way to just manage web hosting billing and support services, Blesta is a great option! There’s always the possibility that you can switch your web hosting management platform but keep in mind, you’ll have to uproot everything from your support system down to your billing so it could cause quite the disruption.